Quotes About Autocracy

Trump has torn off America's Band-Aid. The stories we are covering are about fundamental American values. We are having debates about democracy versus autocracy, the rule of law, equality and diversity.

And when it comes to the dangers of political autocracy and the rise of authoritarian behavior, people in the faith community must be among the first to raise the challenge. Our "Reclaiming Jesus" declaration concludes its proposition on our commitment to "Christ's way of leadership" with this commitment: "We believe authoritarian political leadership is a theological danger threatening democracy and the common good—and we will resist it.

All and sundry manifestations of police tyranny and autocratic outrage, in addition to the evils connected with the economic struggle, are equally "widely applicable" as a means of "drawing in" the masses.

Listen, then, says the angry Sophist (Thrasymachus), I proclaim that might is right, and justice is the interest of the stronger. The different forms of government make laws, democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their interests, they deliver to their subjects as justice, and punish as unjust anyone who transgresses them.

When examples of openness of thought come from a single ruler, they count for nothing, except to show that he alone can afford to be like that because he is king.

Millions of Russians found themselves gripped by a tyranny incomparably worse than that of the Czar.

Our 21st-century world is an incredibly dangerous one. Between brutal civil wars, violent extremism, spreading autocracy, rising inequality, territorial expansionism, election interference, and nuclear proliferation, our policymakers have their hands full.

I am the state.

Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will, although operated by an intermediary, an amanuensis. He wants a dictator made in his own image.

Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will

imperial Russia. He was a member of the Black Hundreds, an ultranationalist society that espoused a motto of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality." The Black Hundreds despised anything and anyone who would challenge the House of Romanov: communists, Jews, and Ukrainian nationalists.

A dictatorship by any other name is still a dictatorship, whether its symbol is the czarist two-headed eagle or the hammer and sickle.

WITH COMMUNISM NO LONGER VIABLE, THE DEFAULT RALLYING CRY for an autocratic Russian leader is nationalism. Putin, with his staged military parades and frequent invocation of past heroics, sounds that trumpet repeatedly. He wants citizens to believe that only he can restore his country to its rightful position in world affairs. If that means playing a little rough, so be it

To hold the line, we must recognize that despots rarely reveal their intentions and that leaders who begin well frequently become more authoritarian the longer they hold power.

If Trump insists that judges are biased and calls the American criminal system a "laughingstock," what is to stop an autocratic leader like Duterte of the Philippines from discrediting his own judiciary?

Designating "(Fill in the blank) First" as the golden rule of international relations provides an all-purpose justification for tyrants to do as they like.

Good subjects must feel guilty. The guilt begins as a feeling of failure. The good autocrat provides many opportunities for failure in the populace.

Beauty is the greatest of human powers. Any power without counterbalance or control becomes autocratic and leads to abuse and to folly. Despotism in a government is insanity; in woman, fantasy.

This is not a democracy," I said, understanding he fear but unable to do anything about it. "It's a Maxocracy.

To begin with unlimited freedom is to end with unlimited despotism.

Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigorously, more vigorously, and more severely, than by one.

The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom, and yet keep it for himself.

Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.