Svetlana Alexievich Quotes

No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine

The chains of military despotism, once fastened upon a nation, ages might pass away before they could be shaken off.

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

All military regimes use security as the reason why they should remain in power. It's nothing original.

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.

In most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny.

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

Africa has more dictators per capita than any other continent.

When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation - namely, life, liberty and justice for all.

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

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

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.

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

Most Hungarians know what it was to live in a dictatorship; some are old enough to have known both fascism and communism. No one wants to go back to that.

Communism feeds on aggression, hatred, and the imprisonment of men's minds and souls. This shall not take root in the United States.

Dictators are interesting, no?

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.

Russia is an Evil Empire.

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.

Within the Russian system, everything depends on the character of those few who hold full power in their hands. The position of the individual within present-day Russia has been described as follows: far-reaching economic security by sacrificing personal liberty.

The ultimate failures of dictatorship cost humanity far more than the temporary failures of democracy.

You do not have people with placards out in the street on North Korea. I mean, that is a disgusting regime. The people are kept in a form of slavery, 23 million of them, and no one protests!

There is no such thing as a liberal dictatorship, because a dictator just cannot afford to be liberal.

In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism the latter adversary will, without question, win and will control the world. The era of democracy is finished and the democratic system bankrupt. There is not room in the world for two different systems or for two different economies.