#dictatorship

No one should suffer from the great delusion that any form of communism or socialism which promotes the dictatorship of the few instead of the initiative of the millions can produce a happier or more prosperous society. ↗

— Charles E. Wilson

#communism #delusion #dictatorship #few #form

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people. ↗

— Harold H. Greene

#claim #dictatorships #does #every #name

I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who turned out to be the best Bourbon in history and who swiftly dismantled Franco's entire system. If this action was 'terrorism,' it had something to be said for it. Everyone I knew in Spain made a little holiday in their hearts when the gruesome admiral went sky-high. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#dictatorship

Look, words are like the air: they belong to everybody. Words are not the problem; it's the tone, the context, where those words are aimed, and in whose company they are uttered. Of course murderers and victims use the same words, but I never read the words utopia, or beauty, or tenderness in police descriptions. Do you know that the Argentinean dictatorship burnt The Little Prince ? And I think they were right to do so, not because I do not love The Little Prince , but because the book is so full of tenderness that it would harm any dictatorship. ↗

— Juan Gelman

#the-little-prince #words #beauty

But when you have bad governance, of course, these resources are destroyed: The forests are deforested, there is illegal logging, there is soil erosion. I got pulled deeper and deeper and saw how these issues become linked to governance, to corruption, to dictatorship. ↗

— Wangari Maathai

#become #corruption #course #deeper #destroyed

The president feels not only do we need to change these rogue regimes, but even our friendly allies, who really basically have, sort of, benign dictatorships, need to get with the program if they want to have long-term security and prosperity from terrorism. ↗

— Mitch McConnell

#basically #benign #change #dictatorships #even

I never thought about becoming a politician. But during the military dictatorship, my grandfather was put in prison six times and my father twice. If my family and my country didn't have this history, I might be a professor somewhere today. ↗

— Georgios A. Papandreou

#becoming #country #dictatorship #during #family

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty. ↗

— Plato

#arises #democracy #dictatorship #extreme #form

We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. ↗

— Joseph Ratzinger

#certain #desires #dictatorship #does #ego

The accords were fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship. ↗

— George F. Kennan

#democratic #dictatorship #fig #hide #leaves