Quotes About Dictatorships

attained democracy, as brutal dictatorships took over, led to the cynical phrase: One man, one vote-one time.

the 20th century morality tale of 'socialism vs. freedom' or 'communism vs. capitalism' is misleading. Capitalism is not a political system; it is a form of economic life, compatible in practice with right-wing dictatorships (Chile under Pinochet), left-wing dictatorships (contemporary China), social-democratic monarchies (Sweden) and plutocratic republics (the United States).

If Greece had gone through a very normal political life, I may have not been in politics. But just the fact that I lived through huge upheavals and very difficult struggles and polarization and the barbarism of dictatorships - that made me feel that we had to change this country.

The Holy Book calls upon Muslims to resist tyranny. Dictatorships in Pakistan, however long, have, therefore, always collapsed in the face of this spirit.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries.

We always have to blame our failures on somebody else, and dictatorships always need an external enemy to bind their followers together. As the man said, for every complex problem there's a simple solution, and it's wrong.

It may be odd that I also felt a "shock of recognition" when I first saw Pryor. But watching Pryor reminded me of an emotional condition that is specific to Koreans: han, a combination of bitterness, wistfulness, shame, melancholy, and vengefulness, accumulated from years of brutal colonialism, war, and U.S.-supported dictatorships that have never been politically redressed. Han is so ongoing that it can even be passed down: to be Korean is to feel han.

Pryor reminded me of an emotional condition that is specific to Koreans: han, a combination of bitterness, wistfulness, shame, melancholy, and vengefulness, accumulated from years of brutal colonialism, war, and U.S.-supported dictatorships that have never been politically redressed. Han is so ongoing that it can even be passed down: to be Korean is to feel han.

At the State Department, where I oversaw our human rights diplomacy, I often confronted dictatorships like China about their censorship of the Internet, which they justified by claiming they were merely filtering out lies. Our government cannot and should not take that path.

The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world - the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships, and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states - was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism.

I am the same ardent pacifist I was before. But I believe that we can advocate refusing military service only when the military threat from aggressive dictatorships toward democratic countries has ceased to exist."66

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it. I hate war, and never again will I sanction or support another.

I hate war... for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.

Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight.

If Greece had gone through a very normal political life, I may have not been in politics. But just the fact that I lived through huge upheavals and very difficult struggles and polarization and the barbarism of dictatorships - that made me feel that we had to change this country.

In all cases communism brought vicious dictatorships and widespread human rights abuses.

The fact is that all left-wing political dictatorships since the French Revolution have ended up being in some way totalitarian: that is, directing not just the politics of the nation under revolution but the social and cultural fabric of the entire society.

Central to the idea of a democracy is the ruse that civilian control of the military prevents military dictatorships. But it's different when the civilians running the defense establishment are oil barons, arms manufacturers, spooks and spokesmen for General Electric.

First, I look at history the way I look at evolution. Some things die out for a good reason, and should be left dead. I put dictatorships and velociraptors in the same category: leave them in the past, where they can serve as frightening object lessons for the present.

Like most of the left's leaders, I was a Marxist and a socialist. I believed in the "dialectic" of history and therefore, even though I knew that the societies calling themselves Marxist were ruled by ruthless dictatorships, I believed they would soon evolve into socialist democracies. I attributed their negative features to under-development and to the capitalist pasts from which they had emerged.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence," he explained. "'Necessitous men are not free men.' People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

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.

In dictatorships you need courage to fight evil; in the free world you need courage to see evil.