#dictators

Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin), your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold. Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? ... If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle Ages. I hope you will not answer me that Power is for political men a professional duty, and that any attack against that power must be considered as a threat against which one must guard oneself at any price. This opinion is no longer held even by kings... Are you so blinded, so much a prisoner of your own authoritarian ideas, that you do not realise that being at the head of European Communism, you have no right to soil the ideas which you defend by shameful methods ... What future lies in store for Communism when one of its most important defenders tramples in this way every honest feeling? ↗

— Pyotr Kropotkin

#anarcho-communism #communism #dictatorship #freedom #lenin

I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and unbreakable. Suddenly overnight it blew away like dust. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#away #before #believed #berlin #berlin wall

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

#democracy #dictatorship #difference #first #later

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas. ↗

— Antonio Tabucchi

#doctrines #ideas #perfection #totalitarian

There is, of course, nothing wrong in a program that aims to please everybody, except that as a rule it is a prelude to dictatorship. ↗

— J. Christopher Herold

#napoleon #age

Wir sind das Volk!" Dieser Satz hat uns gelehrt, dass wir, wenn wir unserer Sehnsucht glauben und ihr vertrauen, die Angst verlieren können. Eine Angst, die willfährige Dienerin jeder Art von nicht legitimierter Herrschaft ist, die uns ohnmächtig macht, die uns bindet. In dem Augenblick aber, in dem wir unsere Angst als Angst benennen und Anpassung und Angst als Geschwisterkinder erkennen, sind wir möglicherweise bereit zu erproben: Können wir auch ohne sie leben? In genau diesem Augenblick wachsen uns jene Kräfte zu, die eine ganze Gesellschaft verändern können. ↗

— Joachim Gauck

#civil-rights #courage #democracy #dictatorship #empowerment

If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier... as long as I'm the dictator. Hehehe. ↗

— George W. Bush

#dumb #dictatorship

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#choose #dictatorship #exist #fascist #i

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

— Lincoln Diaz-Balart

#castro #dictatorship #reporting #truth #truth is

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship. ↗

— Henry A. Wallace

#been #claimed #dictatorship #facilitates #modern