Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

This maxim is commonly attributed to Aesop as a moral drawn from fables in which a powerful aggressor invents a pretext to harm the weak—most often associated in modern quotation collections with the tale of “The Wolf and the Lamb.” In that story, the wolf accuses the lamb of various offenses (muddying the water, insulting him, etc.); each charge is refuted, but the wolf proceeds to devour the lamb anyway. The line functions as a proverbial summation of the fable’s lesson: when someone has unchecked power and intends injustice, they will manufacture a justification after the fact.

The sentence argues that tyranny is not constrained by reason or evidence: a tyrant does not need a legitimate cause, only a plausible pretext. “Excuse” here means a justification offered to others (or to oneself) to mask arbitrary power. The point is less about the quality of arguments than about the asymmetry of power—when one party can decide the outcome, rational debate becomes performative. As a proverb-like moral, it warns that oppressive actors will always find (or invent) grounds for coercion, so the real issue is the tyrant’s will and capacity, not the victim’s innocence.