Tariq Ali Quotes

The peaceful path out of totalitarianism has never been tested.

We had a revolution 2 years ago, and we see a people moving from a completely authoritarian system into a democracy. They don’t know how democracy works. They don’t know the ingredients of a democracy.

Anti-democracy...is a virus that exists, and pro-democracy is the antibody to that virus, and I think we have to become vigilant, and we have to stay on top of the issues of democracy and freedom.

In countries where democracy is either non-existent or in development, on the other hand, citizens crave those freedoms. Maybe that is one lesson Western citizens can learn from those countries: treasure what you have. Use your rights and freedoms to effect the change you want.

I think the Russians might do away with the terror in twenty or thirty or years, when they are richer, and when they don't need these repressive methods so much.

You cannot apply your high standards to a country [Egypt] burdened with decades of autocratic rule. Our democracy is still in its infancy.

Democracy is about criticism.

The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.

And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system.

We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships.

Obama was late to affirm the Egyptian revolution as a democratic movement, and even then he was eager to have installed those military leaders who were known for their practices of torture.

With Taiwan, it took about 40 years to go from an authoritarian to a democratic society.

I would love to be the African leader that steps down, that overthrows this idea of a Big Man ruler. I don't want to stay in office forever.

Even in a society as tightly controlled as Singapore's, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the long run may lead to democracy.

A country where every man, be he fool or wise, is free to speak that which is in him, can never suffer a revolution.

The transition from authoritarianism to democracy is not as easy as it appears in position papers – it is a rambunctious affair.

I believe in defending democracy by preserving democracy, not by descending to the use of the same weapons used in dictatorships, whether of the Nazi or Communist stripe.

Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.

When my husband and I had to escape from Czarist Russia with a price on our head [in 1905], we had utopian dreams of what Russia might become under a communist government with the Czar deposed but never really thought we would live to see it. But I did live to see my utopian dream come to reality. But it was not Russia. It is America, here and now. There is not a single thing that we revolutionists hoped for, that has not come to pass in America—the greatest country in human history.

Establishing a stable democracy is a two stage process. First you get rid of the old regime, then you build a durable democratic replacement. Because the first stage is dramatic, many people think the game is over when the dictator is gone. But the second stage is more difficult. There are many examples of broad coalitions coming together to oust dictators but relatively few of them stayed together and agreed on what a new regime should look like.

Our liberty cannot depend on the good intention of those in power.

The most repressive societies have always restricted speech the most — and when people are finally able to speak, they often call for change.

It may take a generation to achieve democracy. But our generation must accomplish this and not pass the buck to the next.

No dictatorship can be sustained within the context of an information revolution.

Let us never allow ourselves to think that poverty is an excuse for an invitation to totalitarianism, and if we should be tempted to think as much, let us remind ourselves that totalitarianism not only extinguishes liberty but institutionalises poverty as well