Kofi Annan Quotes

There is a real and evident problem of democracy in Georgia, and this was the core reason of my entrance into politics. We have no rule of law. It's absolutely absent.

Only two countries in this hemisphere are not democratic, but many countries in both Central and South America, and in the Caribbean, are really fragile democracies.

Hosni Mubarak... his constitution is not democratic, but he is democratic. We can voice our opinions now. The press is free.

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 problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power.

The idea that democracies could be vulnerable to demagogues is not a new notion.

Trump's rise to power, fueled by hatred and portending crisis, threatens to eviscerate our constitutional system of government.

I probably will not live to see Turkey become an exemplary democracy, but I pray that the downward authoritarian drift can be stopped before it is too late.

There's a serious and worrying return to the fall of democracy in Spain, and it's not just us who are realising that.

Ukraine is facing a serious threat of isolation as some local political forces want to put an end to democracy and democratic reforms in the country

In the past decade, nearly a dozen elected Latin American presidents have been forced from office.

Democratization is not necessarily the best way to fight Islamic extremism, because the transition to democracy has been found to be an especially vulnerable period for states across the board.

Don’t let religious authorities decide what can or can't be published, …. free speech is vital for democracy, for social change, for the possibility of challenging what has been laid down by established authorities…. freedom only for those who do not offend, annoy, and irritate entrenched authorities - is no freedom at all.

The peaceful path out of totalitarianism has never been tested.

Demagogues are the mob's lackeys.

A democratic society cannot tolerate mob rule.

Democracy is not an end but the means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either Parliament submits or we will eliminate Parliament.

If the terrorists were to explode even one suitcase-sized nuclear weapon in a Western city, democratic institutions might not survive. The security agencies in the Western democracies would be granted, or would simply seize, powers comparable to those of the Gestapo and the KGB…. I doubt that democratic institutions will be resilient enough to stand the strain.

Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt. Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?

A transition from party to personal government has preceded every failure of a republic.

Advancing democracy does not always foster political stability.

This is about standing for fundamental values that have been the foundation for the development of Western democracies over several hundred years, and we are now in a situation where those values are being challenged. I think some of the Muslims who have reacted very strongly to these cartoons are being driven by totalitarian and authoritarian impulses, and the nature of these impulses is that if you give in once they will just put forward new requirements. We do not apologize for printing the cartoons. It was our right to do so.

We are sliding down into the mire of a democracy ...

It is when it is contended that in a democracy right is what the majority makes it to be that democracy degenerates into demagoguery.

There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.