Dictatorship Quotes - Page 10

• The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.

  Steven Van Zandt

  Father, Simple, Democracy

  "There Is Only One Issue In America" by Steven Van Zandt, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 10, 2011.

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• The science of war leads one to dictatorship, pure and simple. The science of non-violence alone can lead one to pure democracy. Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than power derived from fear of punishment. It is a blasphemy to say non-violence can be practiced only by individuals and never by nations which are composed of individuals. The nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on non-violence. A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be the purest anarchy.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Running, War, Simple

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• In South America euphemism appears to be the grisly preserve of violent power. 'Liberty' was the name of the biggest prison in Uruguay under the military dictatorship, while in Chile one of the concentration camps was called 'Dignity.' It was the self-styled 'Peace and Justice' paramilitary group in Chiapas [Mexico] that in 1997 shot 45 peasants in the back, nearly all of them women and children, as they prayed in a church. What have the souls of the south done over the past few decades to deserve quite so much liberty and dignity and peace and justice?

  Isabel Fonseca

  Children, Military, Past

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• The United States condoned dictatorships in Latin America for much of the 20th century.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Latin, America, United States

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• Hollywood always had a streak of the totalitarian in just about everything it did. The old moguls were essentially hard-fisted authoritarians who had created a system of linked dictatorships to control the creative people. We were supposed to be the children; mad, tempestuous, brilliant, talented, not terribly smart children.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Children, Smart, People

  Shirley MacLaine (1975). “You Can Get There From here”

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• Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution.

  James Bovard

  Law, People, Democracy

  Interview with Anthony Wile, www.thedailybell.com. September 25, 2011.

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• Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

  Alice Walker

  Confused, Greed, Humanity

  Alice Walker (2013). “We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness”, p.9, The New Press

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• There are examples of fraternal dictatorships, or one, anyway: the passing of power from Fidel to Raul Castro.

  Elliott Abrams

  Example, Passing, Castro

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• When our mothers are alive and healthy, they do extraordinary things... like the mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who marched in Argentinean plazas, defying the military junta dictatorship and demanding the whereabouts of their abducted children... or the Liberian mothers who faced down civil war armed only with T-shirts and courage.

  Liya Kebede

  Mother, Children, Military

  "Let’s Make Mother’s Day a Global Reality" by Liya Kebede, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 7, 2009.

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• The Reformed Church was identified with the old all-white government of South Africa and its apartheid policy. The Roman Catholic Church was closely identified with the Franco and Salazar dictatorships in Spain and Portugal. . . . More recently, . . . the Serbian Orthodox Church has come to be identified with the policies of Serbia (Yugoslavia).

  Edd Doerr

  Government, Yugoslavia, White

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• Dictatorships sometimes fall unexpectedly and quickly. And [Vladimir] Putin knows that for him, the loss of power doesn't mean a comfortable retirement, but something completely different.

  Garry Kasparov

  Retirement, Fall, Mean

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I would like to travel to my country again, to a country without a dictatorship, to a post-Putin Russia.

  Garry Kasparov

  Country, Russia, Putin

  "Putin Needs Wars To Legitimize His Position". Interview with Erich Follath, www.spiegel.de. November 10, 2015.

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• In both life and work, stay flexible. Whether in a country, a company, or a family, the same holds true: Dictatorship and rigidity rarely work. Freedom and elasticity do.

  Robert Mondavi

  Country, Rigidity, Company

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• We want no dictatorship of physicists, as physicists. If our democracy is to realize its full promise, we want no dictatorship at all - of any species. What we want and need is the enlightened and active interest of all men of intelligence and goodwill in their government, and their participation in its functions.

  Jerome Frank

  Men, Intelligence, Promise

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• No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument - the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say "Heil" to him, nor will they call him "Führer" or "Duce." But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of "O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!"

  Dorothy Thompson

  Boys, People, Election

  "Watchdogs of Democracy? : The Waning Washington Press Corps and How it Has Failed the Public" by Helen Thomas, (p. 172), 2006.

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• In some states militant nationalism has gone to the lengths of dictatorship, the cult of the absolute or totalitarian state and the glorification of war.

  Arthur Henderson

  War, Gone, Length

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• If dictatorship is the concentration of power, freedom consists in its diffusion.

  Lord Hailsham

  Political, Concentration, Diffusion

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• The history of mankind is a history of the subjugation and exploitation of a great majority of people by an elite few by what has been appropriately termed the 'ruling class'. The ruling class has many manifestations. It can take the form of a religious orthodoxy, a monarchy, a dictatorship of the proletariat, outright fascism, or, in the case of the United States, corporate statism. In each instance the ruling class relies on academics, scholars and 'experts' to legitimize and provide moral authority for its hegemony over the masses.

  Ed Crane

  Religious, Class, People

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• A democracy is a compromise by its nature. It's not a dictatorship.

  Jamie Dimon

  Democracy, Compromise

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the nonexistent 'rights' of gang rulers. It is not a free nation's duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Russia, Rights

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• There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship: one-party rule, executions without trial or with a mock trial for political offenses, the nationalization or expropriation of private property, and censorship. A country guilty of these outrages forfeits any moral prerogatives, any claim to national rights or sovereignty, and becomes an outlaw.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Party, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.388, Penguin

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• The procedure we are pursuing is that of true democracy. Semi-democracy accepts the dictatorship of a majority in establishing its arbitrary, ergo, unnatural, laws. True democracy discovers by patient experiment and unanimous acknowledgement what the laws of nature or universe may be for the physical support and metaphysical satisfaction of the human intellect's function in universe.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Law, Support, Democracy

  R. Buckminster Fuller (2008). “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth”, p.103, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• "Our government will soon become what it is already a long way toward becoming, an elective dictatorship.

  J. William Fulbright

  Government, Long, Way

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• I've heard people in the Middle East tell me that the most inspiring thing for them as people struggling against dictatorship in the Middle East is the memory of the civil rights movement.

  Peter Beinart

  Memories, Struggle, Rights

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• And you grit your teeth, despising yourself for your tremulous sensitivity, and wondering how human beings can suffer their individualities to be mercilessly crushed under a machinelike dictatorship, be it of industry, state or organization, all their lives long.

  Sylvia Plath

  Organization, Long, Individuality

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.85, Anchor

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