„Oppression and tyranny are the worse companions for the Hereafter.“

Nahj al-Balagha

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 14, 2022.

Ali124

cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad 601 - 661

Related quotes

„People don’t revolt because they have been tyrannized, they revolt when they feel the tyranny, for the feeling of oppression is worse than oppression itself“

— Ali Al-Wardi Iraqi sociologist 1913 - 1995

People, Feeling

„If you neither believe in religion nor fear the hereafter, then at least be free from tyranny and arrogance“

— Husayn ibn Ali The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib 626 - 680

Biharul Anwar, Vol. 45, P. 51
General Quotes

Fear, Religion

„The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.“

— Herbert Spencer English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist 1820 - 1903

On Manners and Fashion
Essays on Education (1861)

Suffering

„Tyranny doesn’t move the people unless it was accompanied with complains from oppression“

— Ali Al-Wardi Iraqi sociologist 1913 - 1995

People

„Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.“

— Malcolm X American human rights activist 1925 - 1965

Source: Malcolm X Speaks (1965), p. 158

Freedom

„Speak against unconscious oppression,
Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,
Speak against bonds.“

— Ezra Pound American Imagist poet and critic 1885 - 1972

„Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.“

— Thomas Jefferson 3rd President of the United States of America 1743 - 1826

Letter to Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours (24 April 1816)
1810s

People, Evil

„It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist.“

— John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton British politician and historian 1834 - 1902

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
Context: It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

„A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.“

— James Madison 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817) 1751 - 1836

Speech, Constitutional Convention (29 June 1787), from Max Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. I http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llfr&fileName=001/llfr001.db&recNum=494&itemLink=D?hlaw:5:./temp/~ammem_kmli::%230010495&linkText=1 (1911), p. 465
1780s
Context: In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

Home

„The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.“

— William James American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842 - 1910

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4

World, Way, Fashion, Hell

„There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.“

— Robert A. Heinlein, book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)
Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Thinking

„The human mind loves the bondage of words and is apt, when freed from one form of their tyranny, to set up another more oppressive than the last.“

— L. P. Jacks British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister 1860 - 1955

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Context: The human mind loves the bondage of words and is apt, when freed from one form of their tyranny, to set up another more oppressive than the last.
The highest function of philosophy is to enforce the attitude of meditation and therewithal restrain the excessive volubility of the tongue. To us it seems that the reflective thinker wins his greatest victories when by what he says he compels us to recognise the relative insignificance of anything he can say. His task is not to capture Reality, but to free it from captivity.

Love

„All the Messengers of God were sent to free people from poverty, injustice, oppression, and tyranny. Despite their claims, is there any government today that can prove to be similar to the Prophets?“

— Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1956

Twitter 6 Apr 2019
2019

God, People

„The term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.“

— Howard Zinn author and historian 1922 - 2010

Terrorism and War (2002)

War, People, Evil, Time

„In regard to the Germans and foreigners, I esteem them no better than other people, nor any worse. It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles-the oppression of tyranny-to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke, than to add anything that would tend to crush them.“

— Abraham Lincoln 16th President of the United States 1809 - 1865

1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Commercial version

Life, People, Nature

„In order to be heard by the oppressing class, one must speak as a member of it. Not only the language, but the diction. The accusation of tyranny, however well-founded in fact, is dismissed unless it is delivered in the manner that power recognizes as powerful.“

— Daniel Abraham speculative fiction writer from the United States 1969

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 21 (p. 223)

„It seems that the rebels found the chaos of transition more difficult to accept than the tyranny they had known before. They joyfully welcomed back authority-even oppressive authority-for it was less painful for them than uncertainty.“

— Brandon Sanderson American fantasy writer 1975

Source: The Well of Ascension

Pain

„America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society. The peoples of the world are becoming profoundly dissatisfied and are not appeased by the promise of the social-democrats to patch up the State into a new engine of oppression.“

— Peter Kropotkin Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geographer, writer 1842 - 1921

Speech (26 September 1891); as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 269

People, World, Freedom, Country

„The background to the war, my studious Homomdan pal, is three thousand years of ruthless oppression, cultural imperialism, economic exploitation, systematic torture, sexual tyranny and the cult of greed ingrained almost to the point of genetic inheritability.“

— Iain Banks, Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 3 “Infra Dawn” (p. 66)

War

„The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.“

— Vladimir Nabokov, book Invitation to a Beheading

Source: Invitation to a Beheading