Wilhelm Liebknecht Quotes

To trample democracy with one’s feet and to give power to a single man over almost eighty million people is so terrible that one can very probably tremble over the events which will come here.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

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.

I've played so many historical characters because most horrible dictators are short, fat, middle-aged men.

Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.

Dictators are ludicrous characters, and, you know, in my career and in my life, I've always enjoyed sort of inhabiting these ludicrous, larger-than-life characters that somehow exist in the real world.

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.

In domestic as in political tyranny, the case of absolute monsters chiefly illustrates the institution by showing that there is scarcely any horror which may not occur under it if the despot pleases

… the inhuman communist police state tyranny

I am inclined to believe dictators. Not to is dangerous.

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.

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.

With the suppression of all political parties, the bases were laid for the totalitarian state.

President Maliki: The appetite has grown with the eating. He has become a real dictator.

Erdogon has become so paranoid, so power-hungry, he doesn't even allow institutions to flourish. It has become a one-man show.

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.

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.

The U.S.S.R. was a totalitarian state in which judges and prosecutors were controlled by the ruling party. The result was injustice, oppression and corruption.

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.

We've been saying Putin is a dictator for years who doesn't care about the law.

In Iraq during the days of Saddam, I had a government minder who followed me everywhere, reported on my activities.

Africa has more dictators per capita than any other continent.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

I should like to underline: no people, no country, in which a Communist dictatorship has been established, ever found its way out of it.