Word: tyrant
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...timing-a single miscalculation of hours or minutes can send the plotters to their execution-he also shows how easy it is to prevent a coup. In his appendices Luttwak offers other advice for despots eager to cling to their posts. It resembles that given by one of the tyrants of ancient Greece. Asked how it was that he was never troubled by rivals, the tyrant walked into his garden and, without a word, lopped off the heads of the tallest flowers...
...fact that Northern Ireland's politics are still ruled by prejudice and personalities. The patrician Prime Minister is a cautious and moderate man who talks about issues; his opponents stir their followers with appeals to passion. Extremist Paisley, for instance, calls O'Neill a "traitor and a tyrant," and his followers delight in scrawling "F-k the Pope" on boardings. Only the extremist factions received any real psychological lift from the elections, an ill omen for the troubled country...
...sits chatting with visitors in the living room or over the cracker barrel at the country store. Salty and profane as a whaler captain, he has a mean word for everybody. Composer Deems Taylor? "What a punk!" His Mississippi steamboat-captain grandfather, Charles Henry Ruggles? "A terrible old tyrant-he had to be captain of the ship all the time." His father Nathaniel? 'Drunk all the time." His boyhood hero, Actor Richard Mansfield? "A fine actor but a mean bastard," To this day, he has only one answer when asked about the state of American music: "I think...
...power Russia, has arrived at the crossroads of history. It arrived with tanks, troop carriers and hungry and grimy soldiers who failed to understand why they were sent. Let us remember the philosopher who said: 'Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends...
Martin Luther accused him of playing God. An English observer saw him as an idler who wanted "only an apple and a fair wench to dally with." To one subject he was "a tyrant more cruel than Nero." When his wife Anne Boleyn was about to be beheaded by his executioner, she maintained: "A gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never." Even as they felt the impact of his boisterous personality, the sting of his vindictiveness, or the thrust of his appetite for pleasure and power, the contemporaries of King Henry VIII could never quite understand...