Tyranny
Lawless rule by one who governs for his own good rather than the common good.
Works to read
- Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie, c. 1548 (published 1576)
- Animal Farm by George Orwell, 1945 · Great Books
- The Agricola and the Germania by Tacitus, 98 CE
- De Regno by Thomas Aquinas, c. 1265-1266
- The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, 1764
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, written 1928–1940; published 1966–1967
Passages
From the texts
Now a tyranny is a monarchy where the good of one man only is the object of government, an oligarchy considers only the rich, and a democracy only the poor; but neither of them have a common good in view.
— Aristotle, Politics
Verified quotations
Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another’s harm
— John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
I doubt not, then, but innocence shall make False accusation blush, and tyranny Tremble at patience
— William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale
His administration was temperate, as has been said before, and more like constitutional government than a tyranny.
— Aristotle (attributed), The Athenian Constitution
But the law is always striving to make one;--like an obstinate and ignorant tyrant, who will not allow anything to be done contrary to his appointment, or any question to be asked
— Plato, Statesman
Hermione is chaste; Polixenes blameless; Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous tyrant; his innocent babe truly begotten; and the king shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found
— William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale
What is now holding sway in the super-ego is, as it were, a pure culture of the death-instinct, and in fact it often enough succeeds in driving the ego into death, if the latter does not protect itself from the tyrant in time by a revulsion into mania
— Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id
Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: tyranny, tyrant, despot, oppression. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.