Dictator Quotes

• I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.

  Che Guevara

  People, Liberators

  Statement in Mexico in 1958. "Kaplan AP World History 2005". Book by Mark Bach, p. 240, 2004.

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• The uniformity and obedience of the media, which any dictator would admire...

  Noam Chomsky

  Media, Politics, Anarchy

  "Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1985.

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• When dictators feel their support slipping among adults, it is not unusual for them to alter school textbooks in the hope of enlisting impressionable youths in their cause.

  Samantha Power

  School, Support, Causes

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• A dictator's chief problem is keeping the stomachs of his subjects full while keeping their heads empty.

  Evan Esar

  Problem, Empty, Chiefs

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• If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

  Mel Brooks

  Winning, Soapbox, Rhetoric

  "Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures" by George Heymont, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 4, 2011.

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• The job of dictator is now a high-risk job.

  Alain Juppe

  Jobs, Risk, High Risk

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• Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism.

  Aldous Huxley

  Appeals, Tyranny

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.

  Demosthenes

  Law, Enemy, Opponents

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• It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

  Herbert Hoover

  Freedom, Democracy, Ladders

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• Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

  Plato

  Plato, Democracies Have, Political

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• Dictators free themselves by enslaving others. They work not for your benefit, but their own.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Benefits, Politics

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• Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.

  Gene Sharp

  Thrones, Election, Remove

  Gene Sharp (2010). “From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation”, p.6, Albert Einstein Institution

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• The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Hate, Men, Long

  "Fictional character: A Jewish Barber". "The Great Dictator", 1940.

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• Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Hate, Men, Greed

  "Fictional character: Hynkel (Dictator of Tomania / A Jewish Barber)". "The Great Dictator", www.imdb.com. October 15, 1940.

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• Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims - as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force - he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Wish

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.986, Penguin

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• No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.

  J. Michael Straczynski

  Freedom, Learning, Army

  "Babylon 5". www.imdb.com. 1994–1998.

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• 

  We think too much and feel too little.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Kindness, Thinking, Wicked World

  "Fictional character: A Jewish Barber". "The Great Dictator", 1940.

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• Better to live a day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep

  Benito Mussolini

  Inspirational, Funny, Sheep

  "ITALY: Duce (1922-43)". content.time.com. August 2, 1943.

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• Ideas do not need weapons.

  Fidel Castro

  Ideas, Needs, Weapons

  Fidel Castro's speech at the Conference on Foreign Debt in Latin America and the Caribbean, August 3, 1985.

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• A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  People, Atheism, Way

  W. Somerset Maugham (1939). “Christmas Holiday”

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• The only peace that can be made with a dictator is once that must be based on deterrence. For today, the dictator may be your friend, but tomorrow he will need you as an enemy.

  Natan Sharansky

  Peace, Enemy, Today

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• More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators.

  Dennis Prager

  Tyrants, Done, Century

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The worst thing you can do to a dictator is laugh at him.

  Samantha Bee

  Laughing, Worst

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

  Harry S. Truman

  Funny, Humor, Government

  Lecture at Columbia University, 28 Apr. 1959, in Truman Speaks (1960) p. 51

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• It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.

  Wendell Willkie

  Strength, Being Strong, Peace

  Speech accepting nomination as Republican candidate for president in Elwood, Indiana (August 17, 1940); as quoted in "This Is Wendell Willkie" by Wendell Willkie, (p. 273 - 274), 1940.

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