Lesson to YPFDJ: The dictatorship and tyranny in Eritrea defined by non-Eritreans

Here are collected quotes and sayings concerning tyranny by famous intellectuals of the world. It is amazing how with almost detailed accuracy and similarity dictatorship unfolds itself at different epochs and different countries. Here is how men of history define dictators and dictatorship:

“Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins”
John Locke

A dictatorship is a country where they have taken the politics out of the politics.
Samuel Himmel

Dictators always look good until the last minutes.
Tomas G. Masaryk

Dictators never invent their own opportunities.
R. Buckminster Fuller

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount.
Winston Churchill

Disregard for human beings is the first qualification of a dictator.
Milton S. Eisenhower

In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a ”dictator” substitutes himself for the central committee.
Leon Trotsky

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.
George Orwell

“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
Hermann Goering

“Whenever you have efficient government, you have a dictatorship”
Harry Truman

“Dictatorship is a constant lecture instructing you that your feelings, your thoughts and desires are of no account, that you are a nobody and must live as you are told by other people who desire and think for you”
Stephen Vizinczey

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
Thomas Jefferson

“The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness”
Niels Bohr

“Someone once said that every form of government has one characteristic peculiar to it and if that characteristic is lost, the government will fall. In a monarchy, it is affection and respect for the royal family. If that is lost the monarch is lost. In a dictatorship, it is fear. If the people stop fearing the dictator he’ll lose power. In a representative government such as ours, it is virtue. If virtue goes, the government fails. Are we choosing paths that are politically expedient and morally questionable? Are we in truth losing our virtue? . . . If so, we may be nearer the dustbin of history than we realize.”
Ronald Reagan

“It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.”
Corazon Aquino

“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins”
Pitt Younger

“Experience has shown, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny”
Thomas Jefferson

“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”
James Madison

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.”
Albert Einstein

“Of all injustice, that is the greatest which goes under the name of law; and of all sorts of tyranny the forcing of the letter of the law against the equity, is the most insupportable”
L. Estrange

“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.”
David Hume

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny”
James Madison

“The Framers [of the Constitution] knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny”
Hugo Black

“Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny”
Aeschylus

“The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny”
Mark Twain

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice”
Charles Montesquieu

“Tyranny is always better organized than freedom”
Charles Peguy

“The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth”
Bill Clinton

“Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
James Otis

“Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.”
Ben Nicholson

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence”
John Adams

“You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor”
Walter Bagehot

“There are only two roads, victory for the working class, freedom, or victory for the fascists which means tyranny. Both combatants know what’s in store for the loser.”
Buenaventura Durruti

“A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection.”
Crystal Eastman

“The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.”
Edward Abbey

“[Tyranny is] to compel men not to think as they do, to compel men to express thoughts that are not their own.”
Milovan Djilas

“There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war”
Reinhold Niebuhr

“The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it”
John Ray

“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”
Maximilien Robespierre

“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”
Hannah Arendt

“When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near”
Will Durant

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C.S. Lewis

“The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience”
Albert Camus

“Peace without justice is tyranny.”
William White

“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”
Edmund Burke

“Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think”
Hannah Arendt

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.”
Robert A. Heinlein

“Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.”
Honore de

“The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.”
Oscar Wilde

“Discipline without freedom is tyranny. Freedom without discipline is chaos.”
Cullen Hightower

“The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries”
Thomas Jefferson

“A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.”
Malcolm X

“Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.”
Sidney Hook

“To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things; the force of tradition and tyranny of his own passions.”
Bertrand Russell

“Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them”
George Santayana

“In a world without the law of God, you have chaos, oppression, tyranny, and everyone doing what is right in their own eyes.”
Randall Terry

“There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.”
William Hazlitt

“Freedom is never easily won, but once established, freedom lasts, spreads and chokes out tyranny.”
Trent Lott

“The common good of a collective — a race, a class, a state — was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men’s hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with the declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing of themselves. But observe the results.”
Ayn Rand

“There is only one Education, and it has only one goal: the freedom of the mind. Anything that needs an adjective, be it civics education, or socialist education, or Christian education, or whatever-you-like education, is not education, and it has some different goal. The very existence of modified educations is testimony to the fact that their proponents cannot bring about what they want in a mind that is free. An education that cannot do its work in a free mind, and so must teach by homily and precept in the service of these feelings and attitudes and beliefs rather than those, is pure and unmistakable tyranny.”
Richard Mitchell

“To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.”
Sir Richard Steele

“Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.”
Jeremy Bentham

“Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.”
Gijs de Vries

“When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right”
Victor Hugo

“No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.”
Samuel Johnson

A member of Eritrean Youth Solidarity for Change-Facebook.

A’wet Nhzbi Eritrea. Wedket Ne Higdef!!!