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Dictators Quotes

Browse 64 quotes about Dictators.

Dictators Quotes

“There is only a certain amount of wealth in the world, this thinking goes. Economics is a matter of acquiring and allocating, not creating. This was the view of the world’s smartest people, all top philosophers and not stupid people, for many thousands of years before the age of the enlightenment. It still is.”

“Men of war will always create narratives that serve to justify the unjustifiable horrors of terror unleashed. And a man of peace will know that to argue the narrative is to further feed that narrative in the minds of those who created it, thereby heightening the horrors that those narratives justify. Therefore, a man of peace must destroy the narrative by utilizing the very horrors that they justify.”

“These selective, occasional murders don't just eliminate difficult opponents; they are also a form of messaging. The Saudi monarchy, the Cuban security services, the Kremlin, and the Chinese police don't have to kill every journalist in order to make all journalists in their countries afraid. Modern dictators have learned that the mass violence of the twentieth century is no longer necessary: targeted violence is often enough to keep ordinary people away from politics altogether, convincing them that it's a contest they can never win.”

“Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, “simpler” time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them.”

“Democracies, as we know, are prone to every error from incompetence and corruption to misguided fetishes and gridlock. Therefore, it is astonishing, in a sense, that we would be willing to submit the direction of our societies to the collective wisdom of an imperfect and frequently disengaged public. How could we be so naïve? To that fair question, we must reply: how could anyone be so gullible as permanently to entrust power—an inherently corrupting force—to a single leader or party? When a dictator abuses his authority, there is no legal way to stop him. When a free society falters, we still have the ability--through open debate and the selection of new leaders--to remedy those shortcomings. We still have time to pick a better egg. That is democracy's comparative advantage, and it should be recognized and preserved.”

“The brisk night had put a good chill into the concrete floor, and Mussolini’s corpse had stayed nice and cool throughout the night. His decomposition state had been arrested, and all the flies had flown away to other places. After two men dug his grave the next morning, they buried Benito Mussolini in the Musocco Cemetery on the north side of town. — Watering Cans”

“The Straw Dolls by Stewart Stafford After surrender's pin-drop grief, Came a nihilistic jackboot slope, Replaced with twisting blades, As you dangle on a slippery rope. Everything secure now ashes, A blind road ahead lies shunning, Every pillar of society smashed, In whipped despotic slumming. Fleeting daydreams of rebellion, They'll cut those ideas from you, Violence begetting violence now, The bloodied crown turned blue. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

“All of us stand on the edge of the end of humanity. On one side is a comfortable lifestyle and the turn the blind eye attitude to what is truly happening in and to the world. On the other side, is a life of hardship which means, less mod-cons, less every day luxuries, maybe less food, sharing of what we do have etc. We can't have both in today's world because man has screwed up what chance we did have. There is no 50/50, 80/20 or even 80/20. We choose one way or the other. One way is that we keep on doing what we are doing and make this world uninhabitable for all of our children. Or we can bite the bullet and start thinking of what we can do for our children and their children. The choice is yours, but what will you say to your children besides, "sorry". It will be hard to choose because we are all greedy for what we have, but what about our children who won't have that choice?”

“A country where people are afraid of even their own shadows is surely a country of dictatorship! In such vile countries there are two groups of people: The zombies, the living-dead who serve the dictator and the rest, the clever and honourable people who fight for their freedom!”

“One-man regimes belong to old eras; they involve clowning and arbitrariness! In the twenty-first century only the silly and larky nations give permission to such third-class contemptible regimes!”

“A dictator in a country is a big threat to the whole humanity; a democrat in a country is a great hope to the whole world!”

“There is no such thing as a non-dangerous dictator! Like all the venomous snakes, all dictators are dangerous! Then what is the antidote? Antidote is our love for freedom and our unshakable determination on the matter of keeping this love!”

“If a nation is leaving democracy and choosing fascism, it means that it is taking itself from a peaceful garden to a bloody slaughter house!”

“We think of agents, traffickers and facilitators as the worst abusers of refugees, but when they set out to extort from their clients, when they cheat them or dispatch them to their deaths, they are only enacting an entrepreneurial version of the disdain which refugees suffer at the hands of far more powerful enemies – those who terrorise them and those who are determined to keep them at arm’s length. Human traffickers are simply vectors of the contempt which exists at the two poles of the asylum seeker’s journey; they take their cue from the attitudes of warlords and dictators, on the one hand, and, on the other, of wealthy states whose citizens have learned to think of generosity as a vice. [from the London Review of Books Vol. 22 No. 3 · 3 February 2000]”

“We face a dilemma. 'We' -- the intelligent model of ourselves residing in the neocortex -- are trapped. We are trapped in a body that not only is programmed to die but is largely under the control of an ignorant brute, the old brain. [...] We try to control our old brain's destructive and divisive impulses, but so far we have not been able to do this entirely. Many countries on Earth are still ruled by autocrats and dictators whose motivations are largely driven by their old brain: wealth, sex, and alpha-male-type dominance. The populist movements that support autocrats are also based on old-brain traits such as racism and xenophobia.”

“Earlier, I cited Oswald Spengler’s chilling century-old prophecy that “the era of individualism, liberalism and democracy, of humanitarianism and freedom, is nearing its end. The masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them.” This is the real danger posed by Putin: that he will be a model for other national leaders who want to retain their grip on power indefinitely, despite political and legal constraints.”

“There is no leader who has remained in power for too long and has not morally decayed, who has not become involved in violence against opponents, who has not become a demon, who has not become a fox, who has not become excessively rich, who has not become excessively autocratic, who has not become extraordinarily arrogant and spoiled, who has not become hostile to freedom, who has won the love of an entire nation to the extent of wandering the streets without bodyguards around him.”

“Stalin and Kim made human idols of themselves because they believed, as utopian idealists always do, in the ultimate goodness of themselves and the unchallengeable rightness of their decisions. There was no higher power, and so there could be no higher law. If people disagreed with them, it was because those people were in some way defective--insane, malignant, or mercenary. The rulers could not tolerate actual religion, because they could not tolerate any rival authority or any rival source or judge of goodness, gratitude, and justice.”

“Way of The Slipper (Bug-Repellent Sonnet) This prehistoric world has an instinctual affinity to black and white, binary concepts. Justice is too grand an exercise to be contained by the binary nonsense of violence and nonviolence. Bullets are an act of violence, silence is an act of bookish nonviolence – but there is a third option – the way of the slipper. Slippers are more effective in fighting bugs, than bullets - slippers strip the bugs of power, while bullets make them martyr. With all your slippers combined, the mightiest of tyrant is bound to fall, be it a state head, court judge or copper, or oligarchs rendering democracy into jungle. When people blow their top, billionaires become bum, and presidents turn tramp. Fetch the household bug-repellent from under your feet, and treat the corrupt and bigoted like your offspring gone bad.”

“NO DIVINE BOVINE ! The clumsy creature currently inhabiting the White House is a distinctly dangerous animal. Part boneheaded raging bully, part dastardly coward showing signs of advanced stage mad cow disease. Neither of good pedigree nor useful breeding stock, there is essentially very little of substance between the T (bone) and the RUMP, except of course for an abundance of methane and bullshit. It's high time brave matadors for you to enter the bullring, with nimble step and fleet of foot. Take good aim and bring down this marauding beast once and for all. Slay public enemy number one and we will salute you forever. A louder cheer you will not hear from Madrid to Mexico City, from Beijing to Brussels, from London to Lahore, from Toronto to Tehran and ten thousand cities in between.”