Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount.

When an upstart dictator in the United States (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) succeeds in making this a one-party form of government, when the ballot is useless, I shall have the courage to stand up and advocate the use of bullets.

Dictators are as scared of books as they are of cannon.

When thinking about the fall of any dictatorship, one should have no illusions that the whole system comes to an end like a bad dream… A dictatorship leaves behind itself an empty fields on which the tree of thought won’t grow quickly. It is not always the best people who emerge from hiding.

Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime, the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told.

In the Middle East there are two methods of control: mass repression and mass bribery. In Syria they use mass repression; in Saudi Arabia, mass bribery. In Bahrain, a bit of both.

Any kind of dictatorship, I'm uneasy. I just don't like dictators. I don't like crowds. I don't like hordes, and I don't like other people telling me what to do. This is probably a reaction against people telling me what to do when I was a kid. I won't join any group, espouse a cause against some other people.

Society demands conformity at the expense of individual liberty. Let us be for once a non conformist to be fully alive.

... if your heart and your honest body can be controlled by the state, or controlled by community taboo, are you not then, and in that case, no more than a slave ruled by outside force? What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart, and that attempts to dictate the public career of an honest human body?

Would that the Roman people had but one neck!

Individuals and classes which have lost the force to maintain themselves in power make themselves more and more hated because of their outbursts of random violence. The strong man strikes only when it is absolutely necessary, and then nothing stops him. Trajan was strong, not violent: Caligula was violent, not strong.

Rule with an iron first will inevitably come to an end.

We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box.

When the world’s run by fools it’s the duty of intelligence to disobey.

Today Chile is a country subjected by its Armed Forces to a regime similar to those that appeared in fascist occupied Europe. The country is under state of siege, all the cities under curfews, there are military tribunals established under the military code that like those established during times of war allow no appeal. There are mass arrest of the population and pogroms against foreigners, etc. The Chilean Armed Forces has declared war against the Chilean People…

We in this country have to realize that that Castro revolution against General Batista came about because of conditions that had been allowed to continue over the years in which a large number of people of Cuba had been exploited, ignored and beaten down.

The will of the nation" is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

If men's minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne

… she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly.

In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.

Why does every nation on earth move to change their conditions except us [Arabs]. Why do we always submit to the batons of the rulers and their repression. How long will Arabs wait for foreign saviors?

A dictator is often a revolutionary who has made a name for himself. A revolutionary is often a bourgeois who hasn't.

Every dictatorship creates thousands of smaller dictators who live on for decades.

He [Rafael Trujillo] had his torture chambers. He had his political assassinations. But he kept law and order, cleaned the place up, made it sanitary, built public works, and he didn’t bother the United States. So that was fine with us.