Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.

The saying asserts a political-moral principle: if individuals and societies do not submit themselves to a higher moral law (“God”), they will not remain free, but will drift toward coercive rule (“tyrants”). It frames liberty as dependent on internal restraint—conscience, virtue, religious accountability—rather than merely on external constitutional arrangements. In this view, self-government requires a governing ethic; without it, disorder or corruption invites authoritarian control as a corrective. The aphorism has often been used in later Anglo-American political rhetoric to argue that free institutions presuppose moral formation, though its stark either/or formulation also risks oversimplifying the complex causes of tyranny.