Be assured, fellow citizens, that in a democracy it is the laws that guard the person of the citizen and the constitution of the state, whereas the despot and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and in armed guards.
Neither a life of anarchy nor one beneath a despot should you praise; to all that lies in the middle a god has given excellence.
Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.
The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.
We always make the mistake in the United States of America in Democratic or Republican administrations alike is we tend to embrace the despot that's least troublesome to us. That should not be the way we view things.
Never may a man prone to believe scandal be a despot or a popular leader! Under his guidance, democracy itself will be despotism.
Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.
When I'm making something, I've always felt in charge and therefore able to call the shots. But what you've got to do is stop that turning into arrogance or despotism!
Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
Freedom is contagious. That's why despots fear it so much.
