Dictatorship Quotes - Page 16

• It was a testament to the resilience of humanity. Give a man a tree and he will make it into a boat; give him a leaf and he will curve it into a cup and drink water from it; give him a rock and he will make a weapon to protect himself and his family. Give a man a small box and a limit of 140 characters to type into it, and he will adapt it to fight an oppressive dictatorship in the Middle East.

  Nick Bilton

  Character, Fighting, Men

  Nick Bilton (2013). “Hatching Twitter”, p.201, Hachette UK

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wouldn't call it naive but silly. History does not work like this. If you look at the dynamics of Eastern Europe or even Germany post reunification, you realize that change takes time. No one can deny the fact that we are still not there - I am advocating something which has to go from uprisings to revolutions. It is not coming straight away that it is not going to come but what we have to advocate is that the democratization process is always better than state dictatorship.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Silly, Europe, Uprising

  "You want my reaction? You get my silence". Interview with Lars Mensel and Clemens Lukitsch, www.theeuropean-magazine.com. November 19, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was born in Cuba. At the age of 14 years of age I was involved in a revolution. We were suffering from a very cruel, oppressive dictatorship, and the revolution started in the high schools and the universities. So when I was 14, I was involved in the revolution. I was in the revolution four years. During that time, a young, charismatic leader rose up in Cuba, talking about hope and change. His name was Fidel Castro.

  Ted Cruz

  School, Talking, Years

  "The 68 Most Controversial Things Ted Cruz's Dad Has Ever Said" by Ilan Ben-Meir, Andrew Kaczynski, Megan Apper, www.buzzfeed.com. March 23, 2015.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The [Barack] Obama administration wants to take our rights to keep and bear arms away from us. They are trying to take our God, and our gun. And if they do that, they can impose a dictatorship upon us.

  Ted Cruz

  Gun, Rights, Trying

  "The 68 Most Controversial Things Ted Cruz's Dad Has Ever Said" by Ilan Ben-Meir, Andrew Kaczynski, Megan Apper, www.buzzfeed.com. March 23, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What happened to the Soviet Union happened mainly for domestic reasons. It was a failure of the model based on a command economy and dictatorship. The rejection of freedom and democracy, the decisionmaking monopoly of one party, and the monopoly of one ideology all had a chilling effect on the country. That model turned out to be incapable of making structural changes. It did not open up ways for initiative and was overly centralized.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Country, Party, Rejection

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• France is a republic, and the rules in theory have been made by everyone rather than imposed by a dictatorship or king or whatever. So it's like, we've got to stick to these rules because we made them.

  Jarvis Cocker

  Source: thequietus.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Dictatorships can exist with free markets - not that China is really a free market - especially in poor countries where the regime insists that it's a choice between food and liberty, a false choice. But increasing affluence will inevitably result in political pressure.

  Garry Kasparov

  Country, Choices, Political

  "Garry Kasparov on Russia, chess, and the great gambit of AI". Interview with Alexander Bisley, www.macleans.ca. May 1, 2017.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the biggest problems I found with Irish politics and the economic thing was after the war, after World War II, most of the European countries started to develop economically and socially, but whatever way the Catholic church they took a grip and they almost governed the country. I mean, we were almost like a dictatorship. There is good and bad, but we experienced an awful lot of bad, especially from the institutions that taught children the Christian brothers, etc.

  Gavin Friday

  Christian, Country, Brother

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hosni Mubarak was the glue that held very leaderless and organic and very pluralistic mix of people together. Now that he's gone, there's a lot more debate and division about what happens next, which is healthy. We're essentially still under military dictatorship right now. The military rules the country. It can issue laws by decree.

  Sharif Abdel Kouddous

  Country, Military, People

  Source: progressive.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you are a designer, sometimes it is better not to delegate, because someone pays money for something that you designed, so it should be exactly the way you want it, exactly the way you would have chosen it. People call me a control freak, and I say, "Well, my name is on the shoe." It means the heel needs to be the way I want it and not the way somebody else wants it, and the toe needs to be exactly the way I want it, and the fabric and the material have to be exactly the way I want it. It is not a democracy - it is a dictatorship.

  Tom Ford

  Mean, People, Democracy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is absolutely important that we have a unified alliance and that we explain to the Russians that you cannot be a 21st-century superpower, or power, and act like a 20th-century dictatorship.

  Barack Obama

  Important, Superpower

  Source: www.nytimes.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Trump campaign management team had to be fired a month or so ago because of those shadowy connections with pro-Putin forces. Governor Pence made the odd claim, he said inarguably Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President Obama. Vladimir Putin has run his economy into the ground. He persecutes LGBT folks and journalists. If you don't know the difference between dictatorship and leadership, then you got to go back to a fifth-grade civics class.

  Tim Kaine

  Running, Team, Leader

  "Expanding the Debate: Green Ajamu Baraka “Debates” Pence & Kaine in Democracy Now! Special–Part 1", www.democracynow.org. October 5, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is very difficult to imagine that you can actually get rid of a dictatorship that has been there for 60 years only in 18 days.

  Bassem Youssef

  Years, Imagine, Difficult

  "'Egyptian Jon Stewart' Bassem Youssef Will Now Satirize U.S. Democracy". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 3, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy was assassinated here when Patrice Lumumba was assassinated. And who brought democracy back to this country? We are the ones who did that after pushing out the dictatorship in 1997.

  Joseph Kabila

  Country, Democracy

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Free enterprise democracy has proven the best system by far for maximizing freedom, prosperity, and happiness. Dictatorship, Soviet style communism, and hereditary aristocracy have proven about the worst environments for people to achieve all three of these goals.

  James Stone

  People, Goal, Style

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Keep the faith. Whatever that may be. Don't get too depressed yet, because I have a belief in America being very diverse and ornery, and containing a lot of people who are not going to roll over very easily for a totalitarian dictatorship. That is what I think.

  Margaret Atwood

  Thinking, People, Belief

  "Margaret Atwood answers the question: Is 'The Handmaid's Tale' a feminist book?". www.latimes.com. April 24, 2017.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are things that I love in Iranian cinema and things that I don't. In Iranian cinema, you have to use metaphor because you are living under a dictatorship.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Cinema, Use, Metaphor

  4 Copy quote

• The rifle and handgun are 'equalizers' -- the weapons of a democracy. Tanks and bombers represent dictatorship.

  Edward Abbey

  Democracy, Tanks, Rifles

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.20, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.

  E. B. White

  Country, Design, Attention

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.139, Cornell University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

  Tom Stoppard

  Writing, Artist, Oxygen

  "'You can't help being what you write'". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. September 5, 2008.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of Men and deny equal privileges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a Special privilege for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom.

  Benjamin Rush

  Religious, Time, Art

  Misattributed to Benjamin Rush in "Total Health and Restoration: A 180-Day Journey" by Terry Dorian, p. 49, 2002.

  145 Copy quote

  Show source

• A hurt body and mind aren't just like a dictatorship; they are a dictatorship. There is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusion.

  Stephen King

  Hurt, Pain, Tyrants

  Stephen King (2008). “Duma Key: A Novel”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fundamentalism is dictatorship of the mind

  Hanif Kureishi

  Mind, Fundamentalism

  Hanif Kureishi (2009). “The Black Album with My Son the Fanatic: A Novel and a Short Story”, p.308, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?

  Ayn Rand

  Freedom, Animal, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.141, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The human condition for the vast majority of people on this planet for the entire time of what humanity has been here has been bondage and tyranny, dictatorship, pestilence. That's really what American exceptionalism is, when you get right down to it.

  Rush Limbaugh

  People, Humanity, Majority

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source