Autocratic Regime Quotes

Iran is not ready for Western-style democracy.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.

There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharoah - get first all the people's money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants forever.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it. Dealing with Congress is a matter of give and take. The president doesn't get everything he wants, the Congress doesn't get everything they want. But we're finding good common ground.

When you have an autocratic regime you have no guarantee that the regime will last beyond the autocrat.

Military rule in Indonesia formally ended in 1998, but the army remains above the law.

Every State is a despotism, be the despot one or many.

Putin himself is a character out of fiction, an uber-macho former Soviet thug running a massive, expansionist kleptocracy. The man stages photographs riding horses barechested and hunting tigers. His enemies find themselves on the wrong end of radioactive poisoning.

Hong Kong has always been a symbol of the vibrant and free exchange of cultures, commerce and ideas. This reputation is threatened, however, in the face of China's efforts to increase its authoritarian control within its sphere of influence.

Obama is a statist. He's an authoritarian. He doesn't want to govern; he wants to rule.

My message to the Turkish people is never to view any military intervention positively because through military intervention, democracy cannot be achieved.

Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.

It is in the nature of tyranny to deride the will of the people as the voice of the mob, and to denounce the cry for freedom as the roar of anarchy.

China’s rulers wanted row country to get rich, but not at the cost of control.

Reformist kings can save their dynasties now by helping their countries move smoothly into democracy, or they will end their years in exile like the Russian aristocrats of a century earlier.

What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?

Assad is not the greatest ally to have.

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

Any comparison between the military dictatorship and democracy can only come from those who do not value the Brazilian democracy.

In some countries that are darlings of the West, like Egypt, everyone knows the result of national elections years in advance: The man in power always wins. In others, like Saudi Arabia, the very idea of an election is unthinkable.

Whoever was shouting about dictatorship there... when I heard that, I thought: it's better to be a dictator than gay.

For many years, Myanmar's leadership was largely shut out from the world of international diplomacy.