authoritarian leaders Quotes

[Hitler thought] that Mussolini was no figure of world history, like der Fuehrer or Stalin.

Bolsonaro is a tropical Trump. They have a very common agenda, a very regressive agenda, when it comes to civil rights, social rights, and environmental rights.

Even if you have presidents like FDR dealing with someone like Stalin, with whom he didn't exactly all the time disagree... He wasn't always in lockstep saying Stalin was wonderful all the time. Donald Trump never criticizes Putin.

I've had meetings with Fidel Castro. I've had meetings with Kim Il-Sung. I've had meetings with other dictators. I've met with the Butcher of Beijing. You know, I think it's important to hear, you know, each other's perspective.

Saddam was a bad guy. Assad's a bad guy. Nobody's denying that.

By heralding President Xi Jinping's accession to permanent leadership, soliciting Vladimir Putin's reentry into the Group of Seven, and declaring that Kim Jong Un is 'beloved by his people,' Trump legitimizes the very behavior that U.S. presidents opposed for decades.

Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.

Historians write favorably, you know, for example, about Stalin because he was doing big things.

The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader's charisma. What matters is the leader's mission.

If you read about Mussolini or Stalin or some of these other great monsters of history, they were at it all the time, that they were getting up in the morning very early. They were physically very active. They didn't eat lunch.

The only way to deal with the Czar is to be the last to leave the room.

When we were in school, we were told that Stalin was a madman who got control of Europe, which teaches you nothing.

Stalin's policies pushed the world into the Cold War. Putin has the potential to be equally as dangerous.

There's nothing effective against Trump. Trump is Trump. Trump is going to lie. Trump is going to act the way he's acting. No amount of reason, no amount of criticism, no amount of anything is going to work to change Trump's behavior. Putin is exactly the same way.

Bin Laden always wanted to get rid of Mubarek and Ben Ali and Gaddafi and so on, claiming that they were all infidels working for America, and in fact, it was millions of ordinary people who peacefully, more or less - certainly in the case of Tunisia and Egypt - got rid of them.

No authoritarian leader cedes power easily or turns it over to bodies he cannot control.

In primary school in south-eastern Nigeria, I was taught that Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. I learned the same thing in secondary school. In university, Mubarak was still president of Egypt. I came to assume, subconsciously, that he - and others like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - would never leave.

This is the face of our political class: arrogant, authoritarian, and on the level of some banana republic south of the border. Welcome to the New America, where leader-worship has taken the place of politics, Team Red and Team Blue battle it out to see who gets to be El Supremo for the next four years, and politics resembles a prolonged soccer game.

I have an enduring, very robust infatuation with dictators. I have an infatuation with Stalin, Mao, and Mussolini. In the Paris Review interview I did (in 2013), I said my next book, this one, was going to be about Mussolini. I wound up only having a Mussolini cameo in the book.

Trump, like Putin, has a demonstrably thin skin and short temper when it comes to being criticized by journalists.

I don't believe in the cult of personality, having my portrait hung all over the place like Ronald Reagan or Mao Tse-tung.

You cannot compare me to somebody who makes apologies for Hitler. And I don't think Putin is comparable.

Saddam Hussein admired, studied, and copied Stalin, the paragon of modern dictators.

Are there any monuments built to demagogues? I just don't think so.

I think the arc of history is long, and it bends toward justice. And I think that's what the 'Star Wars' message is. You know, the dark side is in the human heart. And chaos is very troubling for an individual or for a culture, which can lead you to authoritarian leaders. But the arc of history is on the right side. I believe that.