Rand Paul Quotes

The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.

Dictators cause the world's worst problems: all the collapsed states, and all the devastated economies. All the vapid cases of corruption, grand theft, and naked plunder of the treasury are caused by dictators, leaving in their wake trails of wanton destruction, horrendous carnage and human debris.

Mobutu was mainstream Africa. Every independent African Government was a one-party state at the time. None allowed opposition. Every one of them had rent-seeking political leaders. The only thing that set Mobutu apart was how ostentatious his theft was.

This is the only country in the world where a dictator will be allowed to sit among a democratically elected Congress. Everywhere else evil dictators go into exile.

The whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost.

Dictators have the power and funds to hire sycophants who encourage them in their delusions.

When I was at university in the Fifties, Latin America was full of dictators. Trujillo was the emblematic figure because, of course, of his cruelty, corruption, extravagance, and theatricalities.

When any one person or body of men seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one.

The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.

Most of the nations around the world are led by tyrants and dictators and thugs who are leading their countries for one reason.

We are for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we're against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We're helping 107. We've spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity.

Is is true that dictators never dream because they can change their smallest fantasies into realities if they want to?

Unjust rule never lasts continually over time

Some of the defendants say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil.

In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.

De Gaulle has all the characteristics to be a dictator.

A dictatorship would be a lot easier ... so long as I'm the dictator.

It is a favorite maxim of despotick power, that mankind are not made to govern themselves.

During [Simon] Bolivar’s own lifetime, his role changed dramatically, as Bolivar transformed from an anti-colonial populist to a dictator.

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.

Joseph Stalin was a supreme egotist and sadist, capable of sacrificing everything and anyone for the sake of his own power and glory.

If ... America is to become an empire, there is very little chance that it can avoid becoming a virtual dictatorship as well.

I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny