Chen Shui-bian Quotes

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.

No country is free unless it is democratic.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy is always very difficult, and if you read a history of any country that went through this, it wasn't easy. And, you know, you don't end dictatorship one day and next day you have fully fledged democracy.

Getting rid of the dictator is only a first step in establishing a free society. The dictatorship must also be disassembled.

We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships.

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

The free world should not wait for dictatorial regimes to consent to reform.

The peaceful path out of totalitarianism has never been tested.

You don’t go from tyranny to democracy overnight.

The end of some of the harshest dictatorships has not necessarily spelled a more free world. The extinction of the thing we despise is not giving rise to the democracy we hoped for.

If democracy is finished, all is lost.

Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

Taiwan is a budding democracy, and the people have participated in multi-party democratic elections since 1996.

Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Latin America moved decisively away from military rule and toward civilian democracy.

You don't get the fox to be in charge of the chicken coop. You don't give the outgoing regime - which has been practicing dictatorship, is an authoritarian system, it's a bunch of military people - the task of changing Egypt into a second republic, a new Egypt with democracy, freedom, rights, etc.

Almost every country in Africa has now instituted multi-party democracy.

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

As I understand I took most so-called democratic states about 200 years on average to build their democracies. That is why, when we go to sleep under totalitarian rule and wake up in a democracy, it makes me laugh.

The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.

Democracy or Anti-Democracy

No Arab in the Arab world enjoys the civil freedoms that the Arabs in Israel enjoy.

This country has been without stern, sails and wind, and it needs someone at the helm. We are doomed to live in an authoritarian state until genuine democracy, which should not be confused with anarchy, can be set up.

We’re trying to create the first democracy in the Arab world.