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Dictatorship   Listen
noun
Dictatorship  n.  The office, or the term of office, of a dictator; hence, absolute power.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dictatorship" Quotes from Famous Books



... for Robespierre to maintain his dictatorship permanently. He had the revolutionary tribunal divided into sections, and greatly increased the rapidity of the executions with a view of destroying all his enemies; but his colleagues in the Convention began to fear that he would demand their heads next. A ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... questions to exciting side issues and personal facts. In any case, that chapter in Canadian history has received adequate attention.[3] But after Colborne's firmness had repressed the {6} armed risings, and Durham's imperious dictatorship had introduced some kind of order, there followed in Canada a period of high constitutional importance, in which the old issue was frankly faced, both in England and in Canada, almost in the very terms that Burke had used. It is not too much to say that the fifteen years of Canadian history ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... the guilty for the sins of an indolent and uninterested legislature. Moreover, if such a right of arrest were proposed, some wiseacre or politician would probably rise up and denounce the suggestion as the first step in the direction of a military dictatorship. Thus, we shall undoubtedly fare happily on in the blissful belief that our personal liberties are the subject of the most solicitous and zealous care on the part of the authorities, guaranteed to us under a government which is not of men but of laws, until one of ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter—that is his privilege, just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the attraction of gravitation—but it won't do any good, he must OBEY. I wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was one about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... whether the successful aspirant actually controlled the country, whether he had established a state of affairs that approximately represented order, and whether he could be depended upon to protect life and property. During the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, however, certain events had taken place which had awakened the minds of Americans to the possibility of a new international relationship with all backward peoples. The consequences of the Spanish War had profoundly impressed Page. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... woman, have dared to speak publicly against the dictatorship of the Church, the Church, with its usual force and honor, answers argument with personal abuse. One reply it gives. It is this. If a woman did not find comfort and happiness in the Church, she would not cling to it. ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... raised her head, and with the mildness of assured dictatorship, pronounced: 'Never say ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... small body repaired to Trochu and offered him the sceptre, which he politely declined. A more important and respectable body—for it comprised the majority of the Corps Legislatif—urged Palikao to accept the temporary dictatorship, which the War Minister declined with equal politeness. In both these overtures it was clear that the impulse of the proposers was towards any form of government rather than republican. The sergens de ville were sufficient that day to put down ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... capital and took his last fling at State politics. For two months he had deadlocked his party caucus in the election of a United States Senator with hardly more than a dozen legislative votes. And he was going out of his dictatorship in a golden ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... himself unable to stem the current of the multitude, which ran strong and violent, he betook himself, for the present, to his house, and afterwards, for some days together, professing sickness, finally laid down his dictatorship. The senate created another dictator; who, choosing Stolo, leader of the sedition, to be his general of horse, suffered that law to be enacted and ratified, which was most grievous to the patricians, namely that no person whatsoever should possess above five ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... mercy of the successful general whose triumph may make him the idol of the armed millions that alone can accomplish our subjugation. In the South, butchery and rapine by hordes of desperate negroes—in the North anarchy and political intrigue, to be merged into dictatorship and the absolutism of military power. Such would be the results of ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... general assembly of the people from the sentence of a magistrate. 18. To deprive the plebeians of this privilege was the darling object of the patricians, and it was for this purpose alone that they instituted the dictatorship. From the sentence of this magistrate there was no appeal to the tribes or centuries, but the patricians kept their own privilege of being tried before the tribunal of the curiae. 19. The power of the state was now usurped by a factious oligarchy, whose oppressions were more grievous ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... not without sufficient cause. It was currently reported that they had in 1861 conceived the elevation of Fremont to a dictatorship. In 1862, and again in 1863, they invented a scheme for the violent overthrow of the provisional State government and the existing national administration in Missouri. The first act of the program was to seize and imprison Governor Gamble ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... demonstrations of the emigrants, by the outbreak of foreign wars. These were the events about to take place; they would in the end evolve from the chaos of mob rule first the irregular and temporary dictatorship of the Convention, then the tyranny of the Directory; at the same time they would infuse a fervor of patriotism, into the whole mass of the French nation, stunned, helpless, and leaderless, but loyal, brave, and vigorous. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... dictatorship which Young prescribed and carried out in all matters, spiritual and commercial, might be questioned if we were not able to follow the various steps taken in establishing his authority, and to illustrate ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... minutes brings them to the spot, a short distance out of the village, where twenty years ago was established a colony of Frenchmen who had been sent out from France by the late President Lopez at the time of the dictatorship of Carlos Antonio Lopez, his father. The elder Lopez, it appears, desired agriculturists from France, and the younger Lopez, who was then in that country, despatched to him two or three hundred bootblacks, organ-grinders, street vagabonds, etc. whom he had collected on the quays of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... sure," Verkan Vall conceded. "And look how much we've learned from the experiences of those other time-lines. During the Crisis, after the Fourth Interplanetary War, we might have adopted Palnar Sarn's 'Dictatorship of the Chosen' scheme, if we hadn't seen what an exactly similar scheme had done to the Jak-Hakka Civilization, on the Second Level. When Palnar Sarn was told about that, he went into paratime to see for himself, and when he returned, he ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... deserted. As a general fact, the man who dissents from his fellows upon fundamentals of religion, purchases an undisturbed life only by being content with that 'semi-liberty under silence and concealment,' for which Cicero was thankful under the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. 'Obsecro—abiiciamus ista et semi-liberi saltern, simus; quod assequemur et tacendo et latendo' (Epist. ad Attic, xiii. 31). Contrast with this the memorable declaration of Socrates, in the Platonic Apology, that silence and abstinence ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote

... Democratic People's Republic of Korea; abbreviated DPRK Type: Communist state; Stalinist dictatorship Capital: P'yongyang Administrative divisions: 9 provinces (do, singular and plural) and 3 special cities* (jikhalsi, singular and plural); Chagang-do, Hamgyong-namdo, Hamgyong-bukto, Hwanghae-namdo, Hwanghae-bukto, Kaesong-si*, Kangwon-do, Namp'o-si*, P'yongan-bukto, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... costumes for all the special and variety performances we give of the plays: Hamlet in modern dress, Julius Caesar set in a dictatorship of the 1920's, The Taming of the Shrew in caveman furs and leopard skins, where Petruchio comes in riding a dinosaur, The Tempest set on another planet with a spaceship wreck to start it off Karrumph!—which ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... conduct the government and remain bankers, does not clearly appear; but it must be intended that they should combine both offices, for they are to receive no pecuniary remuneration for the political one. Their power is to amount to a dictatorship (M. Comte's own word): and he is hardly justified in saying that he gives political power to the rich, since he gives it over the rich and every one else, to three individuals of the number, not even chosen by the rest, but named by their predecessors. ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... beaten at first by any concentrated power of nearly equal strength. After a time the commander-in-chief emerges from the confused mass of counsellors, and substitutes the action of one mind and will for the conflict of many. The Romans recognized the Dictatorship as the necessary complement of the Republic; and it is worthy of remark that that high office was never abused so long as the people were worthy to be free. "Ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat" was the formula according to which they surrendered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... in which their principles stood incarnate. The French imperial throne is in an especial manner the result of that alarm. When General Cavaignac had succeeded in conquering the "Reds," a military dictatorship followed his victory as a matter of course, and it remained with him to settle the future of France. The principles of his family led him to sympathize with the "oppressed nationalities" which were then struggling in so many places for freedom; and had he interfered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... the first direct word from Count Marlanx came to the Castle. Under a flag of truce, two of his men were admitted to the grounds. They presented the infamous ultimatum of the Iron Count. In brief, it announced the establishment of a dictatorship pending the formal assumption of the crown by the conqueror. With scant courtesy the Iron Count begged to inform Prince Robin that his rule was at an end. Surrender would result in his safe conduct to America, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... by imaginary alarms of the approach of the enemy; with having plundered the national treasury to pay the assassins; and, last and most deadly charge of all, with having formed a plan for a National Dictatorship, of which he himself was to be the first possessor. The charge was sufficiently probable, and was not now heard for the first time. But the keenness and fiery promptitude with which the speaker poured the charge upon him, gave it a new aspect; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... was none the less irritated because his repeated edicts and proclamations of independence received no recognition from the Americans. General Anderson had already stated, in his reply (July 22) to a letter from Aguinaldo, that he had no authority to recognize Aguinaldo's assumption of dictatorship. The native swaggering soldiery, with the air of conquerors, were ever ready to rush to arms on the most trivial pretext, and became a growing menace to the peaceful inhabitants. Therefore, on October 25, Aguinaldo was again ordered to withdraw his troops still farther, to distances varying ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... Northern States to Washington. The Democrats in those States will do all they can to prevent troops from being sent. Before there could be any efficient military organization in the Loyal States brought to bear on his dictatorship, he expects to have a Congress of "the whole nation" around him, of which at least a majority will be defeated Rebels and Copperheads. The whole thing is to be done in the name of the Constitution; and the Proclamation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... state of the masses) in theory, governed by the populace through local councils; in fact, a military dictatorship ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... in this connection he stated as follows: "Four-fifths of the United States would take up arms to defend the Third Term tradition. Trying to get perpetual power and dictatorship ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey

... what I'd do, Prince Trevannion?" Shatrak said. "I'd just heave this Mastership thing out, and set up a nice tight military dictatorship. We have the planet under martial rule now; let's just keep it that way for about five years, till we ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... also manifested no less interest in those of the remotest islands. Indeed, where he found a rich country, inhabited by a people, deemed by him barbarous and incapable of wise legislation, he sometimes relieved them from their political anxieties, by assuming the dictatorship over them. And if incensed at his conduct, they flew to their spears, they were accounted rebels, and treated accordingly. But as old Mohi very truly observed,—herein, Bello was not alone; for throughout Mardi, all strong nations, as well as all strong men, loved to govern the weak. And those who ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... conflict and prevented any settled political action. In 1886 President Andreas Caceres came into power, and, seeing that the populace of the Republic was now exhausted by the continuous state of conflict, he was permitted to rule unchecked until 1890. Caceres established a species of military dictatorship, and remained the power behind the throne until 1894, when, the acting President having died, he found it necessary to come to the front again, and after some confusion and fighting he was proclaimed President for the ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... annual consulships without interruption. He then most artfully refused the magistracy, as well as the dictatorship, absented himself from Rome, and waited till the fatal effects of tumult and faction forced the senate to invest him with a perpetual consulship. Augustus, as well as his successors, affected, however, to conceal ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... change and which realize its importance in all spheres. A writer on world politics very aptly reminds us that "life is change, and a League of Peace that aimed at preserving peace by forbidding change would be a tyranny as oppressive as any Napoleonic dictatorship. These problems called for periodic change. The peril of our future is that, while the need for change is instinctively grasped by some peoples as the fundamental fact of world- politics, to perceive it costs others a difficult effort of thought."[Footnote: H. N. Brailsford ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... B.C. it suddenly became known at Rome that C. Julius Caesar Octavianus (afterward the Emperor Augustus), one of the triumvirs of the republic, and colleague of Mark Antony and Lepidus in the military dictatorship established after the death of Caesar, had sent up for decision to the pontifical college, the highest religious authority of the state, a curious question. It was this: Might a divorced woman who was expecting to become a mother contract a marriage with another man before the birth of her child? ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only 25 those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much 30 fear that the spirit you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... moment, without notice. If a son became a public magistrate, the power was suspended, but was again in force as soon as the period of office terminated. A man who had been Dictator of Rome became his father's slave and property again, as soon as his dictatorship ended. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... extended his reign to Covent Garden, but the time was not ripe for that union of interests between London and New York which has so long seemed inevitable, and his foreign reign was short. So was his American dictatorship; but while it lasted it was probably the most brilliant operatic government that the world has ever known from a financial point of view, and its high lights artistically were luminous in the extreme. At the end of the period Mr. Grau had retired from operatic management forever, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... He yields the military dictatorship to other—far less competent—hands; he grants liberty to the press, liberty of debate, liberty of election, liberty to all and sundry: but suspicion lurks around him; they suspect his sincerity, his goodwill, they doubt his promises, they mistrust that dormant Olympian ambition which has precipitated ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... "The Star and Garter" in 1861 entertaining Murray and two others at dinner, in a heavy and expensive style. He is still an uncomfortable, unattractive figure in a drawing- room, especially with accurate and intelligent ladies, like Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who would not humour his inaccurate dictatorship. Miss Cobbe was his neighbour in Hereford Square. She says that if he was not a Gypsy by blood he ought to have been one; she "never liked him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite," but nevertheless invited him to her house and tried ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... information even to his colleagues on the Council; the General Staff sank into insignificance, and the regulations prescribing the duties of its Chief were treated as non-existent. Mr. Churchill was debarred from a similar dictatorship at the Admiralty mainly because he was not a seaman and had Lord Fisher as his professional mentor; while Mr. Asquith busied himself with keeping the peace between his two obtrusive colleagues, neither of whom expressed the considered views ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... set his seal at Campo-Formio to another of Buonaparte's acts of dictatorship, which, though in one point of view even more unjustifiable than this, was not regarded by the world with feelings of the same order. The Italian territory of the Valteline had for ages been subject to the Grison League. The inhabitants, roused ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... army moved and halted, moved and halted with a weird stateliness. Couriers came back from the man riding ahead, cadet cap drawn over eyes that saw only what a giant and iron race might do under a giant and iron dictatorship. General Jackson says, "Press Forward!" General Jackson says, "Press ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... proceeded to prove by ordering him about for the next hour like the most absolute little despot that ever queened it over a servile province in the dark ages. Bat it was rather difficult to keep up this style of dictatorship with Dennis. He seemed so intelligent and polite that she often had it to her tongue to ask his opinion on certain points. Toward the last she did so, and the opinion he gave, she admitted to herself, was judicious; but for a purpose of her own she ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... Mother of the Tiber," assumed the government and dictatorship of the world. Imperial, dogmatic, relentless, the arbiter of the fate of humanity on earth ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... which none can be looked upon as a Part, who are not a Part of the Legislature. Had the Consuls been invested with the Regal Authority to as great a Degree as our Monarchs, there would never have been any Occasions for a Dictatorship, which had in it the Power of all the three Orders, and ended in the Subversion of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... sovereign still sat on his throne [Page 97] in the central state; but he complained that his only function was to offer sacrifices. The Chinese dictatorship was not hereditary, or the world might have witnessed an exact parallel to the duplicate sovereignty in Japan, where one held the power and the other retained the title ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... army of occupation. The United States, as a rare favour, was to be permitted to pay the cost of the Russian expedition and such other incidental expenses as might arise in connection with the military dictatorship that was to ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... depressed after Chancellorsville; discouraged by European offers of mediation; adjusts itself to war; waning patriotism in; tries to evade draft; draft riots in; bounty-jumping in; Republican gains in; really under Lincoln's dictatorship; relieved from gloom by successes ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... made to suggestions that the army would follow him in a coup d'e'tat is supported by what he formally declared in his memoirs. He there tells us that in 1861 he was often approached in regard to a "dictatorship," and that when he was finally removed many in the army were in favor of his marching upon Washington to take possession of the government. [Footnote: Own Story, pp. 85, 652.] It would seem that treasonable notions were rife about him to an extent that was never suspected, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... any modern language; since the French and the Italians, as well as we, are yet ignorant what feet are to be used in heroic poetry; since I have not strictly observed those rules myself which I can teach others; since I pretend to no dictatorship among my fellow-poets; since, if I should instruct some of them to make well-running verses, they want genius to give them strength as well as sweetness; and, above all, since your lordship has advised me not to publish that little which I know, I look on your counsel as your command, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... will be by fatality reduced to improvise a despotism without other reason of existence than necessity, and which, consequently, is violent and blind as Necessity. We escape from the harmonious monarchy of Reason, only to fall under the irregular dictatorship ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... republic, really a dictatorship under Cromwell. He gave Britain a strong government at home, and made her respected abroad, and laid the foundations of Britain's ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... to recommend them, had need to resort to corruption. And more particularly they accused the dictator himself. And so telling was the effect of these charges, that Menenius, after haranguing the people and complaining to them of the calumnies circulated against him, laid down his dictatorship, and submitted himself to whatever judgment might be passed upon him. When his cause came to be tried he was acquitted; but at the hearing it was much debated, whether he who would retain power or he who would acquire it, is the more dangerous citizen; ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... angry face. In the book she was carrying, a French volume arrived by post this morning, she had found things which troubled her mind and her temper; she was in no mood for submitting to harsh dictatorship. But those blood-shot eyes and shrivelled lips, the hollow temples and drawn cheeks which told of ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... inevitable. Without waiting for the results of the Proclamation to appear, but in full confidence that he had driven a wedge between the Jacobins proper and the mere Abolitionists, he threw down the gage of battle on the issue of a constitutional dictatorship. Two days after issuing the Proclamation he virtually proclaimed himself dictator. He did so by means of a proclamation which divested the whole American people of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus. The occasion was the effort ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... to prove the subservience of Parliament. When Henry was dead, Protector Somerset secured the repeal of most of these laws, but he lost his head for his pains. There is, indeed, no escape from the conclusion that the English people then approved of a dictatorship, and that Parliament was acting deliberately and voluntarily when it made Henry dictator. It made him dictator because it felt that he would do what it wanted, and better with, than without, extraordinary powers. The fact that Parliament rejected some of Henry's measures ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... world, in which Dryden had recently been, and Pope was soon to be, the most conspicuous figure, was for the present under the mild dictatorship of Addison. We know Addison as one of the most kindly and delicate of humourists, and we can perceive the gentleness which made him one of the most charming of companions in a small society. His sense of the ludicrous ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... wanted to make? And then the secular Comtists, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Beesly, who want to 'Frenchify the English institutions'—that is, to introduce here an imitation of the Napoleonic system, a dictatorship founded on the proletariat—who can doubt that if both these clever writers had been real Frenchmen they would have been irascible anti-Bonapartists, and have been sent to Cayenne long ere now? The wish of these writers is very natural. They want to 'organise ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... are the almighty arbiters. Your superior wisdom is going to lead poor blind mankind up the road to heaven. I say it's down the road to hell! The last century saw the dictatorship of the elite and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This one seems to be birthing the dictatorship of the intellectuals. I don't like any ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... juncture, Robespierre was earnestly entreated by one of his more resolute adherents, St Just, to play a bold game for the dictatorship, which he represented as the only means of saving the Republic from anarchy. Anonymous letters to the same effect also poured in upon him; and prognostics of his greatness, uttered by an obscure fortune-teller, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... authority] judicature &c. 965; cabinet &c. (council) 696; seat of government, seat of authority; headquarters. [Acquisition of authority] accession; installation &c. 755; politics &c. 737a. reign, regime, dynasty; directorship, dictatorship; protectorate, protectorship; caliphate, pashalic[obs3], electorate; presidency, presidentship[obs3]; administration; proconsul, consulship; prefecture; seneschalship; magistrature[obs3], magistracy. monarchy; kinghood[obs3], kingship; royalty, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... immortality serum provides a solution to the problem of political power. Rule by a permanent and enlightened elite is by far the best form of government; infinitely better than the blundering inefficiencies of democratic rule. But throughout history, this elite, whether monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorship or junta, has been unable to perpetuate itself. Leaders die, the followers squabble for power, and chaos is close behind. With immortality, this last flaw would be corrected. There would be no discontinuity of leadership, for the leaders ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley

... on the assumption that existing tendencies will continue far into that future. Not to dwell upon the grim probabilities of war, or the possibility of such internal disorder as might compel indefinite suspension of the constitution, and lead to a military dictatorship,—a resurrected Shogunate in modern uniform,—great changes there will assuredly be, both for better and for worse. Supposing these changes normal, however, one may venture some qualified predictions, based upon the reasonable supposition that the race will continue, through rapidly alternating ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... is elected for a third term, I think we will go into a dictatorship just as Russia, Germany, and Italy have already done. I think we are nearer to that now than we heve ever been before. I do not think that Mr. Roosevelt will become a dictator, but I do believe that his being elected a third time will cause some one else to become dictator. My opinion ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... "nothing less than the substitution of a despotic in lieu of a limited monarch;" and then proceeded to bring the accusation down from those lurid generalities of condemnation in which Jefferson himself had cautiously left it, by adding this sentence: "That Mr. Henry was the person in view for the dictatorship, is well ascertained."[272] ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... did not recognize a decree that suspended the constitution and invested Jellachich with the dictatorship, will be found quite natural, if not by you, at least by every Englishman who cherishes constitutional freedom, the more so as its proceedings on this occasion were founded on legal right, viz., on act 4, sect. 6, of 1847-8, which expressly ordains that "the annual session of the Diet ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... the same degree, the idea excluded; and M. Blanc would be greatly surprised were he to be shown, by his continual mixture in his book of the most contrary principles,— authority and right, property and communism, aristocracy and equality, labor and capital, reward and sacrifice, liberty and dictatorship, free inquiry and religious faith,—that the real hermaphrodite, the double- sexed publicist, is himself. M. Blanc, placed on the borders of democracy and socialism, one degree lower than the Republic, two degrees beneath M. Barrot, three beneath M. Thiers, is also, whatever he may say and ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... only friend not mentioned in his will. If anything could palliate his remorseless selfishness it is the candour with which he confessed it. He had made a vast private fortune out of his countrymen's misery. When he surrendered his dictatorship he offered a tenth of his property to Hercules, and gave a banquet to the people on so profuse a scale that great quantities of food were daily thrown into the Tiber. Some of the wine was forty years old, perhaps wine of that vintage which was gathered in when Caius Gracchus died. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... was one, and his enemies were many. In their camps would certainly be found the jealousy, the dissension, the slackness inseparable from coalitions; on his side was the energy, the unity, the secrecy of a strong dictatorship. To a certain extent the deficiency of military means might be supplied by the resources of military art. Small as the King's army was, when compared with the six hundred thousand men whom the confederates could bring into the field, celerity of movement might in some ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... he should declare himself dictator; and he treated with silent contempt the advice of General McClellan, from Harrison's Landing, in July, 1862, that the President should put himself at the head of the army with a general in command, on whom he could rely, and thus assume the dictatorship of the Republic. He asserted for himself every prerogative that the laws and the Constitution conferred upon him, and he declined to assume any power not warranted by the title of office which he held. He was resolute in his purpose to perform every duty that devolved upon him, ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... enabled, by throwing their influence into the hands of demagogues, to overturn the constitution. Julius Caesar, the greatest name in ancient history, himself a patrician, by courting the people triumphed over the aristocratical oligarchy and introduced a new regime. His dictatorship was the consummation of the victories of the people over nobles as signally as the submission of all classes to fortunate and unscrupulous generals. We err, however, in supposing that the Republic was ever a democracy, as we understand the term, or as it was understood in Athens. Power was always ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... representative government and dictatorship is that in the former every representative of the people, in whatever office, confines himself strictly within the limits of his defined powers. Without such restraint there can be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Advantage Aid to Mrs. Helm, Mrs. Lincoln's Sister Announcement of News from Gettysburg. Ask of You Military Success, and I Will Risk the Dictatorship Blockade Broken Eggs Cannot Be Mended Call for Militia to Serve for Six Months Colonization Compensated Emancipation, Confiscation Act Conspiracy of Rebellion Continued Failure to Pursue Enemy Delaying Tactics of Generals Divine Will Does Not Admit of Holidays Don't ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger

... tyrant and a dictator there is no doubt. He is a beneficent tyrant, but a tyrant still, for he always, invariably, has his own way in weighty matters—in trivialities others can have theirs. And as for dictatorship, the man who advances on chaos and transforms it into cosmos is perforce a dictator ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... have conversation after conversation, calling on me to save the nation, alluding to the presidency, dictatorship, etc. . . . I would cheerfully take the dictatorship and agree to lay down my life when ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... first hour of his advent, that was her attitude towards the baby boy. As a piece of her own property, she tolerated him; she assumed it, as a matter of course, that in herself alone should be vested all rights of dictatorship over him. But when, in any way, he interfered with her personal comfort, she handed him over to the safe keeping of his nurse. And the nurse received him with a gratitude unblunted by her forty years' experience of similar babies. She coddled him, and dandled him, and rubbed his little backbone, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... ought to inscribe the answer of the Princess in its records?" A magistrate high in favour with the Minister, M. Cotta, an honest but a light and credulous individual, published a work entitled, 'On the Necessity of a Dictatorship.' A publicist, a fanatical but sincere reasoner, M. Madrolle, dedicated to M. de Polignac a memorial, in which he maintained the necessity of remodelling the law of elections by a royal decree. "What are called ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of the manner in which things were done when a Dictatorship prevailed in the country, and that was what the Dictator did. Upon the whole, I do not think that, in general, out of common history books, you will ever get into the real history of this country, or anything particular which it would beseem you to know. You may read very ingenious ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... apprehended violence not only from the Souths, but also from others who nursed grudges in no way related to the line of feud cleavage. The Hollman-Purvy combination had retained enough of its old power to escape the law's retribution and to hold its dictatorship, but the efforts of John South had not been altogether bootless. He had ripped away two masks, and their erstwhile wearers could no longer hold their old semblance of law-abiding philanthropists. Jesse Purvy's home was the show place of the country side. To the traveler's eye, which had grown ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... Ecclesiastes here covers, as it were, with the shadow of one of its wings the joys and sorrows, the failures and successes of a private family and their friends, with the other the fates of England and Europe; the fortunes of Marlborough and of Swift on their way from dictatorship, in each case, to dotage and death; the big wars and the notable literary triumphs as well as the hopeless passions or acquiescent losses. It is thus an instance—and the greatest—of that revival of the historical novel which ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... saying that, so far, I have not discovered any of the magnetic force of the hero—isn't magnetic force the word? He is ever so nice and quiet and intellectual, and I dare say, as an all-round man, he's first-class, but I have not yet struck the Dictatorship ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... flagged floor. "'Tis but little good a man gets for cleaving loyally to the Commonwealth. The sequestrated estates of the Royalists would have been distributed among the adherents of republicanism, and not held to bolster up a military dictatorship. Bah!" he continued, allowing his temper to overmaster him, speaking in harsh tones and with many a violent oath, "it had been wiser to embrace the Royal cause. The Lord Protector is sick, so 'tis said. His son Richard ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... were,' say you, 'I am willing to stand by them: What I have offered, I have offered modestly: according to the utmost light I had into those scriptures upon which they are bottomed; having not arrived unto such a peremptory way of dictatorship, as what I render must be taken for laws binding to others in faith and practice; and therefore express myself by suppositions, strong presumptions, and fair seeming conclusions from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... I suppose. If he succeeds, Italy is a certain gainer, and Europe through Italy. I say a certain gainer, because the existing oppression (testified by Gladstone and Clarendon) rests upon the aid of Austria, and is far worse than war, and worse than a transitory dictatorship of France; and the mischief of Austria has been that her power has been confirmed by European diplomacy; but if France proves treacherous, it will be against the protest of Europe, and her rule cannot be permanent. Besides, L. N. must almost ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... gave up their posts, and the would-be councillors boycotted the councils, the Government would quickly come to its senses and give effect to the people's will. For the alternative before the Government then would be nothing but despotic rule pure and simple. That would probably mean military dictatorship. The world's opinion has advanced so far that Britain dare not contemplate such dictatorship with equanimity. The taking of the steps suggested by me will constitute the peacefullest revolution the world has ever seen. Once the infallibility of non-co-operation is realised, there is an end ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... that we chaunge reasonyng, I will that the demaunder be chaunged: bicause I would not be thought presumptuous, the which I have alwaies blamed in other: therfore, I resigne the Dictatorship, and give this aucthoritie to hym that will have it, of these ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... to profit by its fall—of conducting liberty into snares to rejoice in anarchy—of disarming the country because he secretly wished it to be defeated—then the nation had a right to make him descend from the throne, and to call him to her bar, and to depose him in the name of her own dictatorship, and for her own safety. If the nation had not possessed this right, the right to betray the people with impunity, would, in the new constitution, have been one of the prerogatives of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... Clinton's dislike of Burr resembled Hamilton's, although for entirely different reasons. Hamilton thought him a dangerous man, guided neither by patriotism nor principle, who might at any moment throttle constitutional government and set up a dictatorship after the manner of Napoleon. Clinton's hostility arose from the jealousy of an ambitious rival who saw no room in New York for two Republican bosses. Accordingly, when the Council, which Jay had refused to reassemble, reconvened under the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... was noticed that several of my papers were missing. Fragments of manuscripts had been stolen, amongst others one dated July, 1848, and directed against the military dictatorship of Cavaignac, and in which there were verses written respecting the Censorship, the councils of war, and the suppression of the newspapers, and in particular respecting the imprisonment of ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... me my position at the university," he said grimly, "but the time has come for all responsible citizens to face the fact that the Government of the United States of America has degenerated into little better than an absolute dictatorship!" ...
— The Deadly Daughters • Winston K. Marks

... turned back to Eylan for political indoctrination. From him, Barrent learned that Earth was believed to be a dictatorship. He learned the methods of a dictatorship, its peculiar strengths and weaknesses, the role of the secret police, the use of ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... broad humor which characterized the Roman people. After a time, when they became established as popular favorites, the dialogue occupied a more prominent position, and was written in verse, like that of tragedy and comedy. During the dictatorship of Caesar, a Roman knight named Laberius (107-45 B.C.) became famous for his mimes. The profession of an actor of mimes was infamous, but Laberius was a writer, not an actor. On one occasion, Caesar offered him a large sum of money to enter the lists in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... form: Democratic Republic of the Congo conventional short form: none local short form: none former: Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Congo/Leopoldville, Congo/Kinshasa, Zaire local long form: Government type: dictatorship; presumably undergoing ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... father, Dom Pedro, in Brazil, thought it wise to recognize the liberal constitution imposed upon him by his people. In the other Latin-American countries the people rebelled against one-man rule. In Chile, General O'Higgins was forced to resign his dictatorship and a provisional Triumvirate assumed the government. At Lima, Bolivar found his powers curtailed. Mariano Prado was elected president. The feeling against imperialism was so strong in Central America that all the smaller ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... of. And how shall I do it? By destroying magnates, by putting an end to the power of the rich, subduing the middle-class... I would hand over the land to the peasants, I would send delegates to the provinces to make hygiene obligatory, and my dictatorship should tear the nets of religion, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... an economic revolution which forms the plan of the real directors of the movement, it is neither the "dictatorship of the proletariat" nor the reorganization of society by the Intelligentsia of "Labour"; it is the destruction of the Christian idea. Socialist orators may inveigh against corrupt aristocracy or "bloated Capitalists," but these are not in reality the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... in his book no acceptance of a transitional stage of class dictatorship. He sees the change coming through a general recognition of the failings of the capitalist system. Indeed, he sees a point in economic development where capitalism may not even be good enough ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... and Etruscans, and see the value of their votes watered down. Political storms are always cyclones. The gale from the east to-day is a gale from the west to-morrow. Who and what were the Gracchi, then?—the sweet voices began to ask—ambitious intriguers, aiming at dictatorship, or perhaps the crown. The aristocracy were right, after all; a few things had gone wrong, but these had been amended. The Scipios and Metelli had conquered the world: the Scipios and Metelli were alone fit to govern it. Thus, when the election ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... the ecclesiastical World, even since I wrote the Letters that have roused your Spleen. Whether it be through a Decline of the Romish Religion, in particular; or, possibly, through a Decline of all Religion, in general; the pontifical and episcopal Dictatorship and Authority are wofully fallen, from the Chair of Infallibility, where they had been seated by Opinion. The Sons of the most bigotted Ancestors do now perceive, that Piety and Immorality are not rightly ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... in London say, that every thing went on well at Harmony until he gave up the management—that is, that he governed the community for the first few weeks, the short period of its prosperity, and that it declined only from the time of his ceding the dictatorship. Now Mr. Owen himself says, that he only interfered when he observed they were going wrong; implying that he did not interfere in the commencement, but did so subsequently. These are contradictions which would require a good ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... prevailed, the textile arts were encouraged, and above all was the anxious care about the kitchen. Vast spaces were sought out for ostentatious houses, so vast that if the consul Cincinnatus had possessed as much land, he would have lost the glory of poverty after his dictatorship. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... the Convention are violent and acrimonious. Robespierre has been accused of aspiring to the Dictatorship, and his defence was by no means calculated to exonerate him from the charge. All the chiefs reproach each other with being the authors of the late massacres, and each succeeds better in fixing the imputation on his neighbour, than in removing it from himself. General ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... rule; after that a BONAPARTE for a few years; then a Republic, "democratic and social," as long as it can keep on its legs. After that a second Republic, for a twelvemonth at least. Then an old BOURBON, if one can be found. After this, a military dictatorship; the army to decide its duration. At each change the people will decide by plebiscit whether they want the respective governments to be: personal, legal, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various

... the president answered with harsh measures, and the soldiery, now exasperated, put Santa Anna at their head, forcing him to re-assume the presidency. Bustamente ran away to Paris, the Santa Fe expedition was soon defeated, and, as we have seen, the president, Santa Anna, began his dictatorship with the invasion of Texas (March, 1842).] But to return to the Santa Fe expedition. The Texans were deprived of their arms and conducted to a small village, called Anton Chico, till orders should have been received as to their future disposition, from ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... sports, from its being divided into two compartments by the spina, a low wall surmounted by pillars, obelisks, and other ornamental erections, as well as from its disproportionate length, which rendered it ill adapted to afford a general view to all the spectators, determined Julius Caesar, in his dictatorship, to construct a wooden theatre in the Campus Martius, built especially for hunting, "which was called amphitheatre (apparently the first use of the word) because it was encompassed by ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... longer looking at her sister. She was gazing out straight ahead of her. It is doubtful even if she had listened to the pronouncements of Mrs. John Day, with her self-satisfied dictatorship of the village social and religious affairs. She was thinking—thinking. And something almost like panic seemed suddenly to have ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... inferiors where they were unknown, was her disdainful explanation to herself, but it piqued and irritated her even while it furnished the material for her sly innuendoes, for the insidious attacks which were fast completing what Andy P. Symes's social dictatorship had begun. With her mounting arrogance Dr. Harpe believed that if her ultimate success in her new ambition demanded the entire removal of Essie Tisdale from the field, this too she could accomplish. Her overweening confidence now was such that she was persuaded that ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart



Words linked to "Dictatorship" :   tyranny, autocracy, police state, authoritarianism, monocracy, Caesarism, one-man rule, shogunate



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