History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
Washington Irving

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police …yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home ‐ all the more powerful because forbidden ‐ terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.
Winston Churchill

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.
Etienne de La Boetie

I'm sure you've enjoyed the ride
Who wouldn't?
I'm sure every perk has perked you up
How could it not?
And every opportunity through me
Helped you climb, didn't it?
Dropping my name, blew doors
Open, now we're close before
Alanis Morissette, Pedestal

I'll break your heart
To keep you far from where
All dangers start
And atmosphere
Gets crazy light
Where every breath just bites
Into the soft
Space of calm about you
Theresa Becker-wayman, Emily Camille Kokal, Jennifer Lee Lindberg, Shannon M. Sossamon, Elephants

Pedestal, Alanis Morissette

Elephants, Warpaint

Nuvole Bianche, Ludovico Einaudi