Chrystia Freeland Quotes

Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.

Authoritarianism provides a kind of negative stability. Democracy creates space to do a lot of things, sometimes bad things, dangerous things.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

We believe that this is not right for a democracy to make revolutions the beacon of promoting democracy.

My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society.

That President Mohammad Khatami's policies have been blocked is the bitterest incident in the contemporary Iranian history. This means that the wishes of millions of people who voted for Khatami and called for freedom and justice have been ignored... Why should cultural activities and journalism be so risky in Iran?

My experience and what scant understanding of politics I possess have convinced me that our peoples will only find well-being under compulsion; but my repugnance for compulsion is so great that I am loath to employ it even to achieve their well-being.

The price of freedom is less than the cost of repression.

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.

Democracy takes time. Dictatorship is quicker, but too many people get shot.

Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

If I were a citizen of Russia, I would resist this communist dictatorship as vigorously as I have endeavored to resist the encroachment upon our democratic institutions in America. I hold that government of one class, denying the other classes the right to participate is tyranny.

No truly sophisticated proponent of repression would be stupid enough to shatter the facade of democratic institutions.

Thank God we in Iran have neither the desire nor the need to suffer from democracy.

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

This is a struggle between a struggling democracy and a vicious dictatorship, and I think we should take sides.

From politics, it was an easy step to silence.

Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt.

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy's enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

In the United States, we can do almost anything we want. It's not like Egypt, where you're going to get murdered by the security forces.

If democracy is finished, all is lost.

I would curse people who resort to coups against democracy, liberty, republic.

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.

If a nation wishes, it can have both free elections and slavery.