Dictatorship Quotes

• The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

  Charles Bukowski

  Trust, Order, Differences

  Charles Bukowski (2013). “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town”, p.190, City Lights Books

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

  Gene Sharp

  Thrones, Election, Dictator

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

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• If you make the state responsible for everything, you shouldn't be surprised when you end up with a state that bears some resemblance to a dictatorship.

  Wolfgang Schauble

  Bears, Responsible, Ends

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Political dictatorship and social hopelessness create the desperation that fuels religious extremism.

  Benazir Bhutto

  Religious, Political, Religion

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• When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

  Victor Hugo

  Wisdom, Political, Politics

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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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• True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Jobs, Freedom, People

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• In a dictatorship there is no choice, the elections are controlled, the police are the military, fear equals control, speech is suppressed, the economy is looted, the people are slaves.

  Alex Jones

  Military, People, Choices

  FaceBook post by Alex Jones from Jan 09, 2017

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• I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

  Richard Branson

  Inspirational, Crazy, Believe

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

  George W. Bush

  Funny, Sarcastic, Would Be

  "Bush Gives on Patients Bill, But Democrats Want More" by Robert Pear, www.nytimes.com. July 27, 2001.

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• Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people.

  Richard Perle

  War, People, Enemy

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• Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.

  Gene Sharp

  Strength, Confidence, Strong

  "Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare". Interview with Mairi Mackay, www.cnn.com. June 25, 2012.

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• Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited.

  Robert Kennedy

  Mistake, People, Criticism

  Robert F. Kennedy (1998). “Make Gentle the Life of the World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy”, Harcourt

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• The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

  Niels Bohr

  Political, Democracy, Weapons

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• Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Courage, Freedom

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• The easiest way to establish a dictatorship is to claim you are God's representative on earth.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religion, Earth, Way

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• The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy of dictatorship.

  Fidel Castro

  Doubt, Enemy, Firsts

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• Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship

  Lincoln Diaz-Balart

  Writing, Truth Is, Castro

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• There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.

  Ai Weiwei

  Sports, Throwing Stones, Stones

  "Acclaimed Ai Weiwei Doc Hits Theaters; China Braces Itself" by Anthony Kaufman, www.indiewire.com. July 26, 2012.

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• The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Essence, Relax, Able

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.55, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it.

  Aldous Huxley

  Taken, Nwo, People

  "The Ultimate Revolution". Aldous Huxley's speech at Berkeley Language Center, www.informationclearinghouse.info. March 20, 1962.

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• If you begin to consider yourself solely responsible to a political party, you're half-way to a dictatorship.

  Clement Attlee

  Party, Political, Half

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• Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle - the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

  Karl Popper

  Happiness, Fighting, Inner Peace

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.465, Routledge

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• Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.

  Shimon Peres

  Funny, Witty, Democracy

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

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• I tell the American people solemnly that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Oasis, People, Liberty

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1941). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1941, Volume 10”, p.255, Best Books on

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