Jose Mujica Quotes

Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet

Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.

I visited Libya in September 1996 for the 27th anniversary of the 'revolution' - a military coup that a 27-year-old Gadhafi led to topple the monarchy and since which he has ruled. Some were optimistic that Gadhafi's 'revolution' could herald a new Libya, but it didn't take long for his brutality to stamp out any such hopes.

Tayyip Erdogan wants to go beyond George W. Bush by making critical journalism and critics in the academy illegal. What will be the difference between him and a military government? Very little. I read his remarks on the effectiveness of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Well, yes. But then the AKP would have to ban all other political parties, close down all critical newspapers, burn the books critical of the regime and gas the Kurds to death...the final solution of the Kurdish 'problem.' Somehow I don't think he is about to do that.

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

Kim Jong-un's style is more suggestive of Saddam Hussein or his murderous son, Uday Hussein.

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.

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

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

I've always been fascinated by totalitarian regimes. I'm not an admirer of them.

Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model of state domination, it is very much alive in the People's Republic of China and in Putin's police state.

This is Nero at his worst. The Constitution as we know it is gone.

You agreed with the Dear Leader or you died or ended up in Camp 913.

He [Rafael Trujillo] had his torture chambers. He had his political assassinations. But he kept law and order, cleaned the place up, made it sanitary, built public works, and he didn’t bother the United States. So that was fine with us.

All the calamities we have experienced, and those which are yet to come, are the result of the consolidating tendency of this government; and unless this tendency be arrested, all that has been foretold will certainly befall us,—even to the pouring out of the last vial of wrath, military despotism.

In Belarus, the government is a kind of presidential monarchy with no checks, no balances, and no rule of law.

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.

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.

Democracy is dead in the Maldives.

In the Franco era, we couldn't defend our ideas.

Saddam Hussein, influenced by fascism, ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of people, fought two disastrous wars, turned his nation into an international pariah and ruined his country’s economy. In other words, his record is identical to George W. Bush’s.

Obama has done things like Hitler did. Let me be very careful here. The National Socialists rounded people up and held them without trial, signed legislation that gave torture impunity, and spied on their citizens, just as Obama has. It isn't a question of what has been done that Hitler did. It's what does every dictator do, on the left or the right, that is being done here and now.

It can't happen here is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.

... I see the country going fascist. We have been going that route a long, long time. A lot of things the country has done from its inception were fascist. But now, now I think we are in the face of a terrible fascist dictatorship.

The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.