Quotes About Autocracy

Autocracy is a government of the few from above; Bolshevism is a government of the few from below.

To blindly and repeatedly assert one's own position, one's own righteousness, and one's own rectitude in the face of widely held opinion to the contrary was not democracy. It was an attempt at autocracy—a bid, as Lincoln said, to "rule or ruin in all events.

Wherever autocratic power vanished at an early date—as in the Netherlands and later in England—and the protective interest receded into the background, they swiftly discovered that trade must be free—"free to the nethermost recesses of hell.

Absolute power corrupts, and power corrupts absolutely

Kim Jong-un's style is more suggestive of Saddam Hussein or his murderous son, Uday Hussein.

Which, autocracy or democracy, is really better suited to modern China? If we base our judgment upon the intelligence and the ability of the Chinese people, we come to the conclusion that the sovereignty of the people would be far more suitable for us.

In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and disembodied aspirations, many brave minds have turned away at last from the vain and endless conflict to the one great historical fact of the land. They turned to autocracy for the peace of their patriotic conscience as a weary unbeliever, touched by grace, turns to the faith of his fathers for the blessing of spiritual rest. Like other Russians before him, Razumov, in conflict with himself, felt the touch of grace upon his forehead.

The true Razumov had his being in the willed, in the determined future—in that future menaced by the lawlessness of autocracy—for autocracy knows no law—and the lawlessness of revolution.

Conrad regarded the formation of a representative government in Russia as unfeasible and foresaw a transition from autocracy to dictatorship.

It seems that the savage autocracy, any more than the divine democracy, does not limit its diet exclusively to the bodies of its enemies. It devours its friends and servants as well.

Autocratic governments are masters of self-contradiction. They say one thing, do another.

I don't want to take power. I want to break the wall of this autocratic regime.

Russia and China, which have embraced autocratic capitalism, have attracted admirers and emulators by the seeming success of their strongman rule.

An authoritarian style of rule is characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it.

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

They were weary of the chaos inflicted by the Roman-Persian wars and longed for the peace that only an autocratic empire seemed able to provide.

Those who would be called tyrants cannot be called free men.

A republican government in a hundred points is weaker than an autocratic government; but in this one point it is the strongest that ever existed — it has educated a race of men that are men.

I am more and more convinced, of the propensity in human nature to tyranize over their fellow men.

A dictatorship is a country where they have taken the politics out of politics.

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.

Democracy is the worst of all possible evils. Only one man can and should give the orders.

I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power.