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There is nothing more hostile to a city than a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal.

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Power

More quotes by Euripides

Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account.

Humility, a sense of reverence before the sons of heaven — of all the prizes that a mortal man might win, these, I say, are wisest; these are best.

Bacchae (-405)

When good men die their goodness does not perish,
But lives though they are gone. As for the bad,
All that was theirs dies and is buried with them.

No! a Spartan maid could not be chaste, e'en if she would, who leaves her home and bares her limbs and lets her robe float free, to share with youths their races and their sports.

Andromache (-425)

One thing only, they say, competes in value with life, the possession of a heart blameless and good.

Hippolytus (-428)

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

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Euripides (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.