Quotes and Sayings about Dictators
"Only a free West can help the prisoners of today's left- and right-wing dictatorships."
- Barbara Amiel
(Related: Help, Right, Today)
"Dictatorships do cut down on rape, and pillage, not to mention sexual harassment, by the simple expedient of sending people to labour camps for life or cutting off their hands without a trial."
- Barbara Amiel
(Related: Life, People)
"It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship."
- Corazon Aquino
(Related: Power, Democracy, Dictatorship, Freedom, Light)
"Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens."
- William Beveridge
(Related: Democracy, Dictators, Evil, Ignorance, May)
"It's true that General Musharraf opposes my return, seeing me as a symbol of democracy in the country. He is comfortable with dictatorship. I hope better sense prevails."
- Benazir Bhutto
(Related: Hope, Country, Democracy, Dictatorship, Sense, Symbol)
"Only that Swiss in the heart want still a king or at least a strong Upper House of Parliament. Swiss long themselves for less democracy and more dictatorship."
- Peter Bichsel
(Related: Heart, Democracy, Dictatorship, Parliament, Want)
"Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship."
- William Blum
(Related: Democracy, Dictatorship, Propaganda, Violence)
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
- Niels Bohr
(Related: Democracy, Dictatorship, Secrecy)
"I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator."
- Richard Branson
(Related: Dictatorship)
"A universal draft is most often the instrument of Third World dictators."
- Joe Bob Briggs
(Related: Dictators, Draft, World)
"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting."
- Charles Bukowski
(Related: Time, Democracy, Dictatorship, Difference, First, Vote, Voting, Waste)
"Hitler's dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law."
- Alan Bullock
(Related: Dictatorship, Law)
"We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace."
- George W. Bush
(Related: Peace, Aggression, Dictators, Nations, Quick)
"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it."
- George W. Bush
(Related: Dictatorship, Question)
"Important as economic unification is for the recovery of Germany and of Europe, the German people must recognize that the basic cause of their suffering and distress is the war which the Nazi dictatorship brought upon the world."
- James F. Byrnes
(Related: War, People, Cause, Dictatorship, Europe, Germany, Suffering, World)
"The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters."
- Fidel Castro
(Related: Dictatorship, Revolution)
"Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people."
- Charlie Chaplin
(Related: People, Dictators)
"The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish."
- Charlie Chaplin
(Related: Men, Power, People, Dictators, Hate, Liberty, Will)
"I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system."
- Noam Chomsky
(Related: Thought, American, Dictatorship)
"Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear."
- Alan Coren
(Related: Democracy, Dictators, Want)
"Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship."
- Lincoln Diaz-Balart
(Related: Truth, Dictatorship, Writing)
"When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near."
- Will Durant
(Related: Dictatorship, Liberty)
"Bosses are no more inevitable in state and local governments than dictators are in national governments. They will arise and prosper, nevertheless, if true believers of democracy - citizens devoted to the democratic ideals - do not constantly oppose them."
- Charles Edison
(Related: Bosses, Democracy, Dictators, Ideals, State, Will)
"Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat."
- Friedrich Engels
(Related: Dictatorship, Paris)
"Khomeini was not a puppet like Arafat or Qaddafi or the many other dictators I met in the Islamic world. He was a sort of Pope, a sort of king - a real leader."
- Oriana Fallaci
(Related: Leader, Dictators, World)
"Fascism is not the result of dictatorship."
- John T. Flynn
(Related: Dictatorship, Fascism, Result)
"The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship."
- Frederick Forsyth
(Related: Dictatorship)
"I hate war... for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it."
- Harry Emerson Fosdick
(Related: War, Hate, Starvation)
"I've recorded 25 or 30 albums. I know that sometimes when you work with producers who are kinda dictators, it doesn't help you make a better record."
- Ace Frehley
(Related: Work, Dictators, Help)
"Dictators never invent their own opportunities."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
(Related: Dictators)
"The world will not accept dictatorship or domination."
- Mikhail Gorbachev
(Related: Dictatorship, Will, World)
"President Bush has shown great leadership. He has said that the 21st century will not be ruled or dictated by terrorists, dictators, and murderers. He is absolutely right. God bless him for his resolve."
- Lindsey Graham
(Related: God, Leadership, Dictators, President, Right, Will)
"Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people."
- Harold H. Greene
(Related: People, Acting, Name, World)
"In some states militant nationalism has gone to the lengths of dictatorship, the cult of the absolute or totalitarian state and the glorification of war."
- Arthur Henderson
(Related: War, Dictatorship, Nationalism, State, states)
"A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture."
- Abraham Joshua Heschel
(Related: Love, People, Affection, Being, Care, Children, Culture, Dictators, Gold)
"When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right."
- Victor Hugo
(Related: Dictatorship, Fact, Revolution, Right)
"The accords were fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship."
- George F. Kennan
(Related: Dictatorship)
"My personal influence in the Revolutionary Governing Council is such that the dictatorship of the proletariat is firmly established, since the masses are backing me."
- Bela Kun
(Related: Dictatorship, Influence)
"What you had at the time was a dictatorship with the team owners."
- Ted Lindsay
(Related: Time, Dictatorship)
"Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections."
- Mario Vargas Llosa
(Related: Democracy, Elections)
"We cannot forget the little things we take for granted in America that remain the disdain of dictators and terrorists throughout the world."
- Trent Lott
(Related: America, Dictators, Forget, World)
"Dictators are rulers who always look good until the last ten minutes."
- Jan Masaryk
(Related: Dictators)
"The president feels not only do we need to change these rogue regimes, but even our friendly allies, who really basically have, sort of, benign dictatorships, need to get with the program if they want to have long-term security and prosperity from terrorism."
- Mitch McConnell
(Related: Change, President, Prosperity, Security, Terrorism, Want)
"In Spain, we should have enough intelligence, enough sense of individual and collective responsibility to do for ourselves that which would be imposed upon us by a dictatorship."
- Frederica Montseny
(Related: Intelligence, Dictatorship, Responsibility, Sense, Spain)
"So I think we should stay focused on the real problem in the Middle East. It's not Israel. It's these dictatorships that are developing nuclear weapons with the specific goal of wiping Israel away."
- Benjamin Netanyahu
(Related: Goal, Israel, Weapons)
"In a way, I have to have a dictatorship. I can't be told that I'm wrong. That conflicts with what I was saying earlier about listening. It isn't to do with receiving criticism and responding to other views, it's who has that last decision."
- Trevor Nunn
(Related: Decision, Criticism, Dictatorship, Listening, Saying, Wrong)
"Pope John Paul II not only visited Nigeria twice but stood by the country in its fight against dictatorship and injustice."
- Olusegun Obasanjo
(Related: Country, Dictatorship, Fight, Injustice)
"One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship."
- George Orwell
(Related: Dictatorship, Revolution, Order)
"Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship."
- George Orwell
(Related: Power, Dictatorship, End, Revolution, Order)
"Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable."
- Shimon Peres
(Related: Democracy, Dictatorship, Television)
"Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces."
- Richard Perle
(Related: Dictators, Enemies, Military, Police)
"Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people."
- Richard Perle
(Related: People, Control, Enemies)
"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."
- Plato
(Related: Democracy, Dictatorship, Extreme, Liberty, Slavery, Tyranny)
"More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators."
- Dennis Prager
(Related: Dictators, Harm)
"History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior."
- Vladimir Putin
(Related: Government, History, Mankind)
"Even a polemic has some justification if one considers that my own first poetic experiments began during a dictatorship and mark the origin of the Hermetic movement."
- Salvatore Quasimodo
(Related: Dictatorship, First, Justification)
"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."
- Joseph Ratzinger
(Related: Goal, Dictatorship, Ego)
"Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
(Related: Beginnings, Dictatorship, First, Nation, Newspapers)
"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
(Related: People, Freedom, Independence, Job, Security)
"Beginning with adolescence, my political formation was oriented in the ideological direction of Marxism. It was natural, being that my thinking was influenced by an atmosphere of active critical resistance. That was the way it was during all of the dictatorship and up to the Revolution of 1974."
- Jose Saramago
(Related: Adolescence, Beginning, Being, Dictatorship, Direction, Revolution, Marxism, Thinking)
"To understand why dictators have a problem with making peace - or at least a genuine peace - the link between the nature of a regime and its external behavior must be understood."
- Natan Sharansky
(Related: Nature, Peace, Behavior, Dictators)
"American presidents always avoid shaking hands with brutal dictators, except when it's advantageous to do so."
- Elizabeth A. Sherman
(Related: American, Dictators)
"It serves notice that President Bush is serious about promoting freedom, because free societies are a lot more peaceable than dictatorships and monarchies."
- Tony Snow
(Related: Freedom, President)
"When the dictators and the opportunists are gone, the cross will still stand before us and something in us will say, 'That is the real thing.'"
- Ralph W. Sockman
(Related: Dictators, Will)
"Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas."
- Antonio Tabucchi
(Related: Ideas, Dictators, Perfection)
"Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight."
- Jalal Talabani
(Related: Fight)
"We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships."
- Tom Tancredo
(Related: Now)
"When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship."
- Harry S. Truman
(Related: Government, Dictatorship)
"It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship."
- Henry A. Wallace
(Related: Age, Technology, Dictatorship)
"It's pretty well known that the CIA has been installing friendly dictators around the world for years."
- Rob Walton
(Related: Dictators, Pretty, World, Years)
"We have a president for whom English is a second language. He's like 'We have to get rid of dictators,' but he's pretty much one himself."
- Robin Williams
(Related: Dictators, English, Language, President, Pretty)
"It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong."
- Wendell Willkie
(Related: Government, Power, People, Dictators, Weakness)
"No one should suffer from the great delusion that any form of communism or socialism which promotes the dictatorship of the few instead of the initiative of the millions can produce a happier or more prosperous society."
- Charles E. Wilson
(Related: Society, Communism, Delusion, Dictatorship, Socialism)