The worst kind of poison for despots: truth.

“That's a tarantula,' he said. 'You got to watch out for them suckers. They can jump four feet. If they get you, you go…

— Barbara Kingsolver

“He was a different kind of poison. The slow, scorching, addictive kind.”

— Alexia Purdy

Love is like a diamond; for as a diamond is beautiful to look upon, so is love fair, but as the diamond is poison…

— Jens Peter Jacobsen

“The patrists poison themselves. The matrists tend to decay, which is merely another kind of poison.”

— Theodore Sturgeon

“Misery was a creeping thing, like the dew settling on grass or the cold fingers of frost meeting me in my bed at night…

— Kat Dunn

“Call it professional interest. You see, Jessamine, love is a kind of poison; one of my favorite kinds, in fact. It infects the blood;…

— Maryrose Wood

“She shrugged. "Ownership is a fragile concept.”

— Kay Kenyon

“The student asks: If my redstone necklace had every view of every veil that ever brightened, would I be wise? The master answers: If…

— Kay Kenyon

“He didn't know which he preferred: the Red, with its fatalistic and pious acceptance of all futures, or the Misery, acknowledging that the more…

— Kay Kenyon

Nothing is more durable than the dynasty of Doubt; for he reigns in the hearts of all his people, but gives satisfaction to none…

— Charles Caleb Colton

Every State is a despotism, be the despot one or many.

— Max Stirner

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul.…

— Oscar Wilde

All ideas advanced to deal with the Florentine noise problem, the Florentine traffic problem, are Utopian, and nobody believes in them, just as nobody…

— Mary McCarthy

If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.

— George Bernard Shaw

At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

— Stendhal