Winston Churchill Quotes About Dictator

• 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.

  Winston Churchill

  Powerful, Fear, Home

  "The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)", radio broadcast to the United States and to London, October 16, 1938.

• Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

  Winston Churchill

  Leadership, Dictator, Socialism

  Letter, 11 Nov. 1937, in Step by Step (1939) p. 186. Cf. the proverb "He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount" (see Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs under rides)

• The dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within.

  Winston Churchill

  Sports, Strong, Party

  Sir Winston Churchill (1965). “Memoral Addresses and Tributes”

• You see these dictators up on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They're afraid of words and thought. ... They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words. ... A state of society where men may not speak their mind - where children denounce their parents to the police - where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endure if it is continually in contact with the healthy outside world.

  Winston Churchill

  Children, Men, Long

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