Gioconda Belli Quotes

The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive.

I am certain they will achieve nothing. The people of Russia will not allow it.

In primary school in south-eastern Nigeria, I was taught that Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. I learned the same thing in secondary school. In university, Mubarak was still president of Egypt. I came to assume, subconsciously, that he - and others like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - would never leave.

It didn't take long for the world to realize that the Shah was an enlightened liberal next to the bloody reactionary regime that followed, and which executed more people in three months than the Shah had done in 30 years.

The word 'democracy' and the name of Assad do not blend very well in much of Syria.

They say that if I win that I'll take away benefits, but the only one who has expropriated things from you is this government. After visiting all around our Venezuela, I don't have a doubt that we will win.

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

Moammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the 'Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,' should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as a grotesque reminder of why people have the right to change their government.

The first thing you need to know, in order to establish some perspective and avoid panic, is that the violent government excesses we're seeing today are far from unprecedented.

Mubarak's regime is dead and finished. People will not go back to this. This is a farce being propagated by the Muslim Brotherhood to say that this revolution was supported by the remnants of the Mubarak regime. They have gone against the whole Egyptian society, and this is why they were removed.

In 1983, most Nicaraguans had still not fallen to the depths of deprivation and despair which they would reach in later years, but many were already unhappy and restive.

Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.

You know that no son of mine could be a goddamn liberal.

No wonder Sukarno doesn’t like us very much. He has to sit down with people who tried to overthrow him.

At a superficial glance this would seem to be an attempt to get rid of one dictatorship clearly adopted by the people of the whole Peruvian Republic, and recognized by foreign governments, including Chili, for a new dictatorship, adopted by the majority of a self-constituted meeting of 110 men of Lima and Callao, and recognized as yet by nobody else except Chili

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.

We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box.

Maintaining legitimacy in an authoritarian state is very difficult.

Morsi has appointed himself as Egypt’s new Pharaoh.

The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes.

You're either Mormon or Southern Baptist in my family. They're incredibly conservative and I love my family.

I grew up in Mexico City at a time when the country was a repressive one-party dictatorship almost wholly dependent on oil revenues.

Almost everything I think we've accomplished for the good of the country has been because of liberals against conservative opposition.

No way Putin will let anyone take away his power. Even if all the people of Russia voted for me.

When Mubarak does die, he will be remembered as the most bland of those military men turned dictators: compare him with Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar Sadat. The legacies most associated with him are a network of bridges and highways and 'stability.'