Michael Ignatieff Quotes

Despotism is a long crime.

Within the Russian system, everything depends on the character of those few who hold full power in their hands. The position of the individual within present-day Russia has been described as follows: far-reaching economic security by sacrificing personal liberty.

Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship.

The saddest country I went to was Romania, years ago, during Ceausescu's rule.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

I'd never been in a police state. I didn't know what it was. I knew that it was, in the general way that people know that two and two is four, but it had no emotional value for me until I found myself in the middle of it.

Fascism in Uruguay did not begin just with the military coup of 1973, but years before, even when there was still a government with a constitution and parliament.

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable.

It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers … call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

Our age has seen the birth of totalitarian systems and forms of tyranny which would not have been possible in the time before the technological leap forward.

this monster, this Colossus of Despotism ... a deep laid scheme to enslave us.

Even the most repressive regimes seek to maintain the fiction that they have the people’s interest at heart.

An oppressive government is worse than a man-eating tiger.

Zaire's one-party system is the most elaborate form of democracy

I don't trust a system where Putin makes all decisions.

The machine of repression can only be started, it can't be stopped - even by Putin.

Colonel Qaddafi's tyranny was absolutist, monarchical, and personal. The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes.

I grew up in Taiwan, which was a military dictatorship.

The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror - real or fake, provoked or accidental - can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy.