Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Quotes

How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?

A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.

Government means politics, and interference by government carries with it always the implication of coercion. We may accept the expanding power of bureaucrats so long as we bask in their friendly smile. But it is a dangerous temptation. Today politics may be our friend and tomorrow we may be its victims.

Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.

Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth.

The Statist has an insatiable appetite for control. His sights are set on his next meal even before he has fully digested his last. He is constantly agitating for government action. And in furtherance of that purpose, the Statist speaks in the tongue of the demagogue, concocting one pretext and grievance after another to manipulate public perceptions and build popular momentum for the divestiture of liberty and property from its rightful possessors.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.

The Communist Party apparatus was the most gigantic mafia the world has ever known.

The people = government doctrine is equivalent to political infantilism -- an agreement to pretend that the citizen's wishes animate each restriction or exaction inflicted upon him.

This we learn from Watergate that almost any creep'll be glad to help the Government overthrow the people.

The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.

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

The Revolutionary Guard controls almost everything in Iran, and this is hurting the people.

When state and religion are one, religion becomes a means for the powerful to remain in power.

Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government.

The term Party is applied equally to the peaceful parties of America and to the Communist Party of Russia, the Nazi Party of Germany, and the Fascist Party of Italy. The methodology of these parties varies, but their fundamental objective-to place and keep their leaders in control of the government - is the same.

Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.

The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present, and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in turn; but it will be at a remote period.

My mind is appalled at the thought of a political party having control of all the details that go to make up the sum total of our lives. Think of it for an instant, that the party in power shall have all authority to dictate the kind of books that shall be used in our schools and universities, government officials editing, printing, and circulating our literature, histories, magazines and press, to say nothing of the thousand and one activities of life that a people engage in, in a civilized society.

A totalitarian power is mainly busy in keeping itself alive.

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

"Our government will soon become what it is already a long way toward becoming, an elective dictatorship.

Even the worst dictator, there is not a single one of them who would say "Oh yes, I violate human rights." They all claim "oh no, we respect human rights" even when they are doing the most egregious things.

Europeans have sometimes been beguiled by a despotism that comes concealed in the seductive form of an ideal – as it did in the cases of Hitler and Stalin. This fact may remind us that the possibility of despotism is remote neither in space nor in time.