Quotes about dictatorship
Christopher Hitchens -
Obviously, there must be some connection between the subordination of actual individuals and the grotesque exaltation of symbolic ones like Kim Il Sung.
Criss Jami - Healology
A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at
Aysha Taryam - The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries
The lesson we are indebted to Egypt for, our future generations learned that in the face of oppression silence is never golden.
Janvier Chouteu-Chando -
The good shall prevail in the end, the truth shall be the rule and the Cameroonian soul shall be free,” Hans said in an emotion-choked voice, “However, we should never lose our heads; we should always be prepared to forgive all the repentant souls.
Janvier Chouteu-Chando -
Most of our brains are out, but it is good what they did for themselves by leaving this country. They are Cameroon’s reserve for development, for the day that this country shall be free. Your late father was an intelligent man. He was even more than that. He was a sage. He once said to me that the intelligent Bamilekés are those who have sought a better future for themselves and for their families in British Cameroons. He was right. They have not been brainwashed as much as their francophone bro
Juan Gelman -
Look, words are like the air: they belong to everybody. Words are not the problem; it's the tone, the context, where those words are aimed, and in whose company they are uttered. Of course murderers and victims use the same words, but I never read the words utopia, or beauty, or tenderness in police descriptions. Do you know that the Argentinean dictatorship burnt The Little Prince ? And I think they were right to do so, not because I do not love The Little Prince , but because the book is so fu
Simon Sebag Montefiore - Young Stalin
It seems that Russia today—dominated by, and accustomed to, autocracy and empire, and lacking strong civic institutions especially after the shattering of its society by the Bolshevik Terror—is destined to be ruled by self-promoting cliques for some time yet.
Mahatma Gandhi -
If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern!
Nick Cohen -
Antisemitism is unique among religious hatreds. It is a racist conspiracy theory fashioned for the needs of messianic and brutal rulers, as dictators from the Tsars to the Islamists via the Nazis have shown. Many other alleged religious 'hatreds' are not hatreds in the true sense. If I criticise Islamic, Orthodox Jewish or Catholic attitudes towards women, for instance, and I'm accused of being a bigot, I shrug and say it is not bigoted to oppose bigotry.
Amit Kalantri -
The one who love power becomes dictator and one who admires power becomes slave.
W.H. Auden - Another Time
SEPTEMBER 1, 1939I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade:Waves of anger and fearCirculate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the earth,Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of deathOffends the September night.Accurate scholarship canUnearth the whole offenceFrom Luther until nowThat has driven a culture mad,Find what occurred at Linz,What huge imago madeA psychopathic god:I and the public knowWhat all
Robin Sacredfire -
The most important individuals on earth have went underground, either for political, social or personal reasons. Ostracized by a society that ignores their most basic rights, they work alone to save the world. Invisible to the five senses, they work from the most unbelievable places, places where they're hardly found, or when found never recognized. I change country at an average of three to six times a year, and travel to places as unpredictable as Lithuania, Julian Assange is in the Equator's
Criss Jami - Healology
Where everyone wants to be a leader, it makes one a follower to want to be a leader, and a leader to know what to follow.
Bangambiki Habyarimana - The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Everybody would be a dictator if he could.
Criss Jami - Healology
Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.
Stefan Molyneux -
If you are for gun control, then you are not against guns, because the guns will be needed to disarm people. So it’s not that you are anti-gun. You’ll need the police’s guns to take away other people’s guns. So you’re very pro-gun; you just believe that only the Government (which is, of course, so reliable, honest, moral and virtuous…) should be allowed to have guns. There is no such thing as gun control. There is only centralizing gun ownership in the hands of a small political elite and their
Beatrice Rose Roberts - A Flag For Betty: from the Diaries of a Whistle-Blower
There is an undeniable web connecting incidents such as the rise to power of dictators... poverty and the perception of human beings as disposable property.
Mehmet Murat ildan -
Earthquake means destruction; dictator means destruction! In the case of earthquake, you need a strong building; in the case of dictator, you need an educated rational mind, because an irrational ignorant mind always serves the dictator!
Wilhelm Reich - The Mass Psychology of Fascism
It was one of the greatest errors in evaluating dictatorship to say that the dictator forces himself on society against its own will. In reality, every dictator in history was nothing but the accentuation of already existing state ideas which he had only to exaggerate in order to gain power
Rudolph Herzog - Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
. Despite the considerable horror they had felt when the SA men were bellowing crude anti-Semitic slogans, in retrospect the joke-tellers were very much aware of the boycott’s inherent absurdity:A city on the Rhine during the boycott: SA men stand in front of Jewish businesses and “warn” passers-by against entering them. Nonetheless, a woman tries to go into a knitting shop.An SA man stops her and says, “Hey, you. Stay outside. That’s a Jewish shop!”“So?” replies the woman. “I’m Jewish myself.”T
Rudolph Herzog - Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
The historian Meike Wöhlert has analyzed and compared the judgments rendered by courts responsible for malicious acts of treason in five cities. Although her research only deals with registered cases and not unofficial ones, the results suggest that the telling of political jokes was a mass phenomenon beyond state control. In 61 percent of official cases, joke-tellers were let off with a warning, alcohol consumption often being cited as an extenuating circumstance. (People who had had one too ma
Rudolph Herzog - Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
The historical record contradicts the assumption that the Nazis sentenced large numbers of people to death during World War II for telling jokes. In the final phase of the Third Reich, some cases did receive capital sentences, but they were extreme exceptions to the rule. (We will return to them later.) The compilations of jokes that circulated in Germany after the war bore titles like Deadly Laughter and When Laughter Was Dangerous, but there is not much evidence that the jokes they contained w
Rudolph Herzog - Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
Finally, my watchers had to fess up. In embarrassed and genuinely polite tones, they said they had no other choice but to arrest me. Then they accompanied me to the prison across the way. As I entered, an extremely tall SS man leapt in front of me and asked: “Do you have any weapons?” “Why?” I responded. “Do I need any?
Rudolph Herzog - Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
Comrades, we are going to try to cheer you up, and our sense of humor will help us in this endeavor, although the phrase gallows humor has never seemed so logical and appropriate. The external circumstances are exactly in our favor. We need only to take a look at the barbed wire fences, so high and full of electricity. Just like your expectations.And then there are the watchtowers that monitor our every move. The guards have machine guns. But machine guns won’t intimidate us, comrades. They just
Clifford Cohen -
We live in an age of equivocal competency: if you want, you can be a competent dictator, a competent self-promoter, a competent terrorist. Just because you can do something well does not mean you should be doing it.
Bangambiki Habyarimana - Pearls Of Eternity
Life is politics, you do it or it does you
Bangambiki Habyarimana - Pearls Of Eternity
In politics what you see is not what you get
Bangambiki Habyarimana - Pearls Of Eternity
Power hungry=life loving
Bangambiki Habyarimana - Pearls Of Eternity
Politicians know it's a game of power, every politician at every level, even in the common of mortals.
Bangambiki Habyarimana - Pearls Of Eternity
Nothing is sweeter and addictive than power, the unlucky soul this demon possesses, if he is not sacrificed on its altar will sacrifice others himself to get it
Christopher Hitchens -
The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civi
DaShanne Stokes -
Fascism thrives in obscurity and darkness.
Criss Jami - Electric Personality
Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.
Criss Jami - Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile
Time and time again does the pride of man influence his very own fall. While denying it, one gradually starts to believe that he is the authority, or that he possesses great moral dominion over others, yet it is spiritually unwarranted. By that point he loses steam; in result, he falsely begins trying to prove that unwarranted dominion by seizing the role of a condemner.
Mehmet Murat ildan -
History shows us that people often make mistakes, they give wrong decisions, they vote for the wrong persons! And history also shows us that in the end they pay a heavy price for it!
Joseph Stalin -
Death is the solution to all problems. No man-no problem.
Yanan Melo - Naaalala Niyo Ba Ang Noli Me Tangere?
Our forefathers were heroes. But why were they heroes? Because they fought for democracy. They fought for the life and liberty of the Filipino people. They fought for our independence, our freedom. They fought against tyranny, totalitarianism, and dictatorship. They fought for us and that is something we must be grateful for.
Wilhelm Reich - Little Man!
For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom tha
Jim -
An act of a dictatorship is an act of a civil war - Freedom to the people.
Wilhelm Reich - Little Man!
It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christia
Criss Jami - Killosophy
Sometimes a people lose their right to remain silent when pressured to remain silent.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan -
The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.
Criss Jami - Healology
Law without reason is criminal.
Aung San Suu Kyi - Freedom from Fear
Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and
Marjane Satrapi - The Complete Persepolis
When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.
Winston S. Churchill - Sweat and Tears
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.
Herta Müller - The Land of Green Plums
At a time I used to think that in a world without guards people would walk differently from the way we do in our country. Where people are allowed to think and write differently, I thought, they will also walk differently.
DaShanne Stokes -
Democracy doesn't mean spreading terror.
Mehmet Murat ildan -
A dictator in a country is a big threat to the whole humanity a democrat in a country is a great hope to the whole world!
George Orwell -
Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home what they fear is physical force.
Mehmet Murat ildan -
One-man regimes belong to old eras they involve clowning and arbitrariness! In the twenty-first century only the silly and larky nations give permission to such third-class contemptible regimes!
Wilhelm Reich - The Mass Psychology of Fascism
Open confession of dictatorship is far less dangerous than sham democracy. One can defend oneself against the former the latter is like a creeper attached to the body of a drowning man.
Wilhelm Reich - The Mass Psychology of Fascism
Open avowal of dictatorship is much less dangerous than sham democracy. The first one can fight sham democracy is insidious.
George Orwell - 1984
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
Ally Condie - Matched
For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives.
Barbara Demick - Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Dr. Kim couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a bowl of pure white rice. What was a bowl of rice doing there, just sitting out on the ground? She figured it out just before she heard the dog's bark.Up until that moment, a part of her had hoped that China would be just as poor as North Korea. She still wanted to believe that her country was the best place in the world. The beliefs she had cherished for a lifetime would be vindicated. But now she couldn't deny what was staring her plainly in
Mehmet Murat ildan -
When a nation leaves the fate of his country to an ignorant and fool person, then that nation itself will be remembered in the history as ignorant and fool nation!
Christopher Hitchens -
Well, as Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn't present always. I mean, often what you're meeting is a very mediocre person. But nonetheless, you can get a sort of frisson of wickedness from them. And the best combination of those, I think, I describe him in the book, is/was General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, who I met in the late 1970s when the death squad war was at its height, and his fellow citizens were disappearing off the street
C.S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally
Amit Kalantri -
Democracy is probably the only discovery by mankind which mostly brought it only happiness.
Charles Stross - The Fuller Memorandum
There is a philosophy by which many people live their lives, and it is this: life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you've got, the less shit you have to eat.These people are often selfish brats as kids, and they don't get better with age: think of the shifty-eyed smarmy asshole from the sixth form who grow up to be a merchant banker, or an estate agent, or one of the Conservative Party funny-handshake mine's a Rolex brigade. (This isn't to say that all estate agents, or merchant bankers, o
Clifford Cohen -
The tyrant’s formula for every genocide since the beginning of time: differentiate, divide, destroy.
Dagobert D. Runes - A Dictionary of Thought
Dictators long ago found that it is easier to unite people in common hatred than in common love.
Mehmet Murat ildan -
There is no such thing as a non-dangerous dictator! Like all the venomous snakes, all dictators are dangerous! Then what is the antidote? Antidote is our love for freedom and our unshakable determination on the matter of keeping this love!
Mehmet Murat ildan -
Supporting a dictator is no different than eating a poisonous mushroom!
Mehmet Murat ildan -
A country where people are afraid of even their own shadows is surely a country of dictatorship! In such vile countries there are two groups of people: The zombies, the living-dead who serve the dictator and the rest, the clever and honourable people who fight for their freedom!
Mehmet Murat ildan -
There is no sunset in a fascist country, because there is not a Sun in a fascist country!
Simon Sebag Montefiore - Young Stalin
The formation of Stalin’s character is particularly important because the nature of his rule was so personal.
Mehmet Murat ildan -
If a nation is leaving democracy and choosing fascism, it means that it is taking itself from a peaceful garden to a bloody slaughter house!
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn -
After a democratic interlude the "monarchy" returns with a vengeance, returns by the back door, camouflaged, masked and diabolically perverted—a blood-curdling metamorphosis we know only from nightmares or surrealist films. The reassertion of the natural father-urge does not result in the restitution of the paternal kingdom but in the rise of the Terrifying Father, a Krónos devouring his own children, who are paralyzed by his magnetic glare like rabbits facing a boa constrictor.
Waseem Kanjo -
When Putin or any wealthy corrupted dictator can decide who is the US President, while Obama or the regular democratic authorities don't have the same power to decide who is the Russian or Chinese president, then the problem is not about Donald Trump, not about The Person,rather it is structural gap related to the Democracy and Dictatorship in deep substance and concept, and should be discussed, reflected, thought, spoke and solved from this very respect, not from drawing daily cartoons for Trum
Garry Kasparov - Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped
Somehow, people always forget that it's much easier to install a dictator than to remove one
Anna Jae -
For the minority, what else is democracy than dictatorship?
G.M. Mes - Now-Men And Tomorrow-Men: Why We Are Not Equal?
In almost every detail, when one examines it closely, it is not Democracy which makes the system work, but the Individual democrats who, in it, use their powers correctly and in the way that they were intended to be used. If those in power were not essentially democrats, the whole situation would collapse. Its strength is not in itself, but in its members. Any “say” that the citizen has in ruling himself is due to the goodwill and the honesty of those to whom he has entrusted the power to rule h
NoViolet Bulawayo - We Need New Names
You want Change, today we'll show you Change!Here's your democracy, your human rights, eat it, eat eat eat!
Garry Kasparov - Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped
Dictators seem to learn from history much better than democrats
Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present
You know history better than I do, you've been teaching all your life. Without real opposition you get dictators down the line. Idi, Amin, Mugabe. No democracy without opposition.
Anthony Corlisatra -
Democracy is a western term for a dictatorship that hasn't come out of the closet.
Edward Bond - Lear
Your law always does more harm than crime, and your morality is a form of violence.
Akuku Mach Pep -
Kenya DOES NOT belong to 2 tribes only. Kenya has 42 tribes. to say that the decision of 2 tribes is the decision of the whole country is fallacy and outright dictatorship and tribalismAkuku Mach Pep, Democracy on Trial
Akuku Mach Pep -
when your actions towards acquiring leadership in any country portrays blatant mischief orchestrated towards disregarding the concepts of the constitution, you do not only become guilty of hijacking power which rightfully belong to the people, but also, you are guilty of violation of the rights of freedom of the same people that you purport to want to lead. Like any match, elections is competition towards democracy, and all competitions have rules that set guidelines in that particular competiti
Christopher Hitchens -
Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries.
Karl Marx - The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The Constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and the red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and penal code, the liberté, égalité, fraternité and the second of May 1852—all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a magician. Universal suffrage se
Oscar Wilde -
I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours.
Sunday Adelaja -
A leader should not be a dictator.
Bruce Coville -
Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.
Christopher Hitchens - and the Left
I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant
Arthur Henderson -
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.
Wole Soyinka -
Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.
Christopher Hitchens - Hitch-22: A Memoir
I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instigated by Syrian and other agents. As the (literally) exto
Auliq Ice -
For every King is right in his own eyes and rests the blame to whoever he wishes to carry it.
Christopher Hitchens - Hitch-22: A Memoir
The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not.
Auliq Ice -
Only a person who perceives that all human beings are important can become a great leader.
Jennifer McKeithen - Atlantis On the Tides of Destiny
You want the world to be perfect, Nedril—and that's a noble goal. But the world isn't perfect. It's people like me who give the world the chance to try another day for virtue.
B.H. Liddell Hart - The Revolution in Warfare
The principle of compulsory service, embodied in the system of conscription, lias been the means by which modem dictators and military gangs have shackled their people after a coup d'état, and bound them to their own aggressive purposes. In view of the great service that conscription has rendered to tyranny and war, it is fundamentally shortsighted for any liberty-loving and peace-desiring peoples to maintain it as an imagined safeguard, lest they become the victims of the monster they have help
Marinella Venanzi - Yasumasa Morimura: Requiem for the XX Century
Looking into the mirror I ask myself:"You live in a house equipped with air conditioning.You eat tasty food.You utilize convenient transportation to travel.You utilize convenient information technology to live.Could you not say that you, who do all this, are not a dictator?Isn't it right that you life is supported by somebody else's death?Doesn't your life that exists at the expense of somebody else's sacrifice infinitely resemble the life of a dictator who only cares about his own life?"-Yasuma
Leon Trotsky - Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky
With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding" to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it.
Pyotr Kropotkin -
Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin), your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? ... If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle Ages.I hope you will not answer me that Power is for political men a professional duty, and
Auliq Ice -
It is not a first time in history that we have got people who have sold out and subverted the ideas for which they stood for in the past.