How to Use despotism in a Sentence

despotism

noun

• The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.
  — Daniel Pipes, WSJ, 26 Aug. 2018
• In those places, people who were in despotism’s firm grip rebelled and quickly learned how firm the grip was.
  — George Will, Twin Cities, 19 Sep. 2019
• The wise government was one that grasped the natural despotism of the human mind.
  — TIME, 31 Jan. 2024
• But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
  — Jack Butler, National Review, 3 Nov. 2020
• Out there — in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere — wars rage, drought crisps the land, democracy strains against despotism.
  — Alan Cowell, New York Times, 28 Apr. 2016
• If that were true, benevolent despotism would be the best form of government.
  — Susan Neiman, New York Times, 17 Apr. 2024
• The apologists for despotism may appear to have won the battle, but not the argument.
  — Christian Caryl, New Republic, 27 Oct. 2017
• Lenin held that Islam, like any religion, was a form of despotism, and that it had been co-opted by the ruling classes of Asia.
  — Thomas Meaney, The New Yorker, 10 May 2021
• As with most open-source projects, the decisions regarding what gets added and changed are made through a mix of despotism and anarchy.
  — Eric Limer, Popular Mechanics, 17 Dec. 2018
• Such a step would smack of despotism in a capital that cherishes checks on power.
  — David Von Drehle, Time, 22 June 2017
• McMahon built this empire through, at once, vision and despotism.
  — Dan Greene, The New Yorker, 31 Mar. 2023
• There’s a paper raising the question of whether despotism is necessary to stop climate change.
  — Daniel A. Gross, The New Yorker, 25 Apr. 2021
• His thug military’s attacks — and those of his thug street enforcers known as colectivos — on Venezuelans who’ve taken to the streets to protest his Gómez-ish despotism?
  — Tim Padgett, Orlando Sentinel, 9 Aug. 2024
• His thug military’s attacks — and those of his thug street enforcers known as colectivos — on Venezuelans who’ve taken to the streets to protest his Gómez-ish despotism?
  — Tim Padgett, Sun Sentinel, 4 Aug. 2024
• What’s striking here is that the same folks who see in Mr. Trump a Mussolini in waiting are blind to the soft despotism that has already taken root in our government.
  — William McGurn, WSJ, 12 Dec. 2016
• Castro’s hideous despotism and draconian restrictions on the Roman Catholic Church did not influence the pope’s judgment of the man or the regime.
  — Daniel J. Mahoney, National Review, 6 Feb. 2020
• Yet the bodies that have washed up on it, almost in sight of the city’s glistening offices and hotels, are a sign of Tanzania’s sickening lurch to despotism.
  — The Economist, 17 Mar. 2018
• Arendt’s true subject is the appeal of authoritarianism and the ease with which despotism can take hold.
  — Erin Overbey, The New Yorker, 29 Dec. 2020
• The Romans overthrew their monarchy, established a republic, and replaced it with a despotism which was a monarchy in all but name.
  — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 23 Dec. 2010
• Yet this isn't the first time of judicial despotism in American history.
  — Ryan Cooper, The Week, 17 Jan. 2022
• The lie is that the discretionary despotism of policing necessarily protects and serves the people.
  — Stuart Schrader, The New Republic, 27 May 2021
• Democracy has its faults, but so, too, does every variety of despotism.
  — Madeleine K. Albright, Foreign Affairs, 19 Oct. 2021
• Although Adolf Hitler met his road to perdition, Joseph Stalin survived and extended his despotism.
  — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 14 Mar. 2024
• And there are worse messages to be putting out into the world via family films right now than celebrating the virtues of kindness and fairness over cruel despotism.
  — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Mar. 2025
• But increasingly, he’s charged with reining in Walt’s runaway ambition — and bearing the brunt of his despotism.
  — Charles McNultytheater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 5 Apr. 2022
• Instead Russia exchanged one form of political oppression – the tsars – for Communism and the despotism of Stalin, the reign of terror and the gulags.
  — Anna Diamond, Smithsonian, 26 June 2018
• The Trump administration’s policies are often tougher on the world’s despotisms than those of his predecessors were.
  — Nr Editors, National Review, 11 July 2019
• The third resembles despotism by a cruel master or absolute monarch.
  — WIRED, 6 July 2023
• If the world order was still to be defined by a preference for liberty and the rule of law over naked despotism, a Pax Americana was needed to supplant the Pax Britannica.
  — Cameron Hilditch, National Review, 14 Mar. 2021
• Western governments have burdened Georgia with a special status as a democracy-in-the-making in a region otherwise beset by despotism.
  — Christian Caryl, Foreign Affairs, 26 Dec. 2024