#authoritarian

For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian. ↗

— Ama Ata Aidoo

#artist #authoritarianism #corruption #embarrass #expose

And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#democratic #democratic system #different #go #i

Obama is a statist. He's an authoritarian. He doesn't want to govern; he wants to rule. ↗

— Rush Limbaugh

#govern #obama #rule #want #wants

There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power. ↗

— Eugenio Montale

#authoritarian #countries #crowd #enthusiastic #especially

In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear. ↗

— Herta Müller

#fear #love

I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head... The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#authoritarianism #bill-of-rights #constitution #democracy #egalitarianism

I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator — that's beyond my conceit. I therefore have no choice but to find something suspect even in the humblest believer. Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, "Created sick — Commanded to be well." And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail. Christians, for example, declare me redeemed by a human sacrifice that occurred thousands of years before I was born. I didn't ask for it, and would willingly have foregone it, but there it is: I'm claimed and saved whether I wish it or not. And if I refuse the unsolicited gift? Well, there are still some vague mutterings about an eternity of torment for my ingratitude. That is somewhat worse than a Big Brother state, because there could be no hope of its eventually passing away. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#authoritarianism #religion #religion

In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies. ↗

— Christiane Amanpour

#basis #civil #civil society #democracies #emerging

If there is an authoritarian structure at St. Hill it has been brought into being by the government itself. St. Hill is trying to correct itself. It doesn't know what it's trying to correct because nobody has told it what to correct. ↗

— L. Ron Hubbard

#because #been #being #brought #correct

Democracy can only spring from practising it early, and democratic action was not to expected from young people brought up under a close authoritarian system. ↗

— Dora Russell

#authoritarian #brought #close #democracy #democratic