Hillary Clinton Quotes

The transition from tyranny to democracy is very hard. The Syrian people have to handle this in a way that works in Syria. And the brutality of the Assad regime is unacceptable.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy is always very difficult, and if you read a history of any country that went through this, it wasn't easy. And, you know, you don't end dictatorship one day and next day you have fully fledged democracy.

I well remember a leading Egyptian liberal saying to me in 2003 that she did not favor free elections right then in Egypt; she favored them in a decade's time if she and others had those 10 years to organize freely.

Deep in my heart, I still believe that the democratization of Russia and the democratization of Ukraine will proceed.

Mexico has experimented with political change since the late 1980s.

I hope that with the success of the transition to democracy in Tunisia that we will export to Egypt a working democratic model.

Democracy in the Middle East has to be front-loaded. You have to have elections first and then try and build democratic institutions. You are not going to have the dictators and clerics of the Middle East allow you to build up democratic institutions slowly.

We’re trying to create the first democracy in the Arab world.

You don’t go from tyranny to democracy overnight.

What seemed uppermost in the minds of many political and civil .society' actors was the handing over of political power to the -patriots". some of them thieves and pillagers of the yesteryear turned "liberators" under the political nirvana of multi-partyism.

We had a revolution 2 years ago, and we see a people moving from a completely authoritarian system into a democracy. They don’t know how democracy works. They don’t know the ingredients of a democracy.

Countries often democratize in clusters within regions of the world..

The idea that if governments open up and become more democratic they will fall is a false dilemma.

Being a very young democracy, we are going to have a fair amount of grumbling that will emerge from our economy…

Establishing a stable democracy is a two stage process. First you get rid of the old regime, then you build a durable democratic replacement. Because the first stage is dramatic, many people think the game is over when the dictator is gone. But the second stage is more difficult. There are many examples of broad coalitions coming together to oust dictators but relatively few of them stayed together and agreed on what a new regime should look like.

The desire for a democratic political system does not by itself create the capacity for establishing one.

Once confined to a handful of wealthy countries, it [democracy] became, in a short period of time, the most popular political system in the world. In 1900, only 10 countries were democracies. By mid-century, the number had increased to 30…. By 2005 fully 119 of the world’s 190 countries had become democracies.

China, in the last – less than half a century, has become one of the great democracies of the world.

The Ennahda-led government did something never before seen in the region: it willingly stepped down

The Sudanese people decide who rules them.

As I reflect on the successes and failures of our push for democracy, reading widely in search for a path out of authoritarian rule, I'll keep writing to encourage myself and those on my side.

In South America, there is no more room for alternatives to democracy.

Trade, tourism, cultural exchange, and participation in international institutions all serve to erode the legitimacy of repressive regimes.

In Asia, democracy has been less advanced than elsewhere. And many of these countries haven't done too badly.

Good or bad people can be democratically elected, but it is always easy to fight for human rights under this system.