Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Despotism is a long crime.
The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.
Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.
Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man.
Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.
Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other or at least no more accurate definition of a despotism than this.
Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.