despotism

From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia.

When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.

From this moment there would be no question of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est spes, wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practice.

Access to unlimited funds by a government, not surprisingly, leads to an unlimited government.

_egalitarianism and despotism do not exclude each other, but usually go hand in hand. To a certain degree, equality invites despotism, because in order to make all members of a society equal, and then to maintain this equality for a long period of time, it is necessary to equip the controlling institutions with exceptional power so they can stamp out any potential threat to equality in every sector of the society and any aspect of human life: to paraphrase a well-known sentence by one of Dostoyevsky__ characters, __e start with absolute equality and we end up with absolute despotism._ Some call it a paradox of equality: the more equality one wants to introduce, the more power one must have; the more power one has, the more one violates the principle of equality; the more one violates the principle of equality, the more one is in a position to make the world egalitarian.

The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church, which had been maintained through the Middle Ages, had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed in Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science 'more geometrico.

Earthquake means destruction; dictator means destruction! In the case of earthquake, you need a strong building; in the case of dictator, you need an educated rational mind, because an irrational ignorant mind always serves the dictator!

Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.

Mis-define the law of brotherly love by giving men a claim on their neighbors and you have destroyed freedom, justified despotism, and assumed that there can be a master mind, in an ordinary human being, as the mind of God.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

I love my country, not my government.

First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain.

Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.

Democracy passes into despotism.

I will believe in the right of one man to govern a nation despotically when I find a man born unto the world with boots and spurs and a nation with saddles on their backs.

Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.

It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.