Paul Kagame Quotes

There's a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he's a reformer.

As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it.

I decided that I was going to leave State House, and I was going also to step up and step aside so that I give President Peter Mutharika an opportunity to run the country without my interference.

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy.

Reforms are less to be dreaded than revolutions, for they cause less reaction.

The Ennahda-led government did something never before seen in the region: it willingly stepped down

Every person should take a lesson from history. We should understand that wherever there have been internal fights and conflicts in the country, the country has been weakened. Due to this, the danger from outside increases. The country has to pay a big price due to this type of weakness.

It would be a huge mistake to abandon democracy promotion. Peaceful political change has been enormously successful in the past years in Eastern European countries as well as in countries like South Korea, South Africa, Chile and Indonesia. However, if possible, the use of force is something to avoid except in cases where genocide is threatened, like Bosnia or Libya or with regimes that threaten our security, like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

What country is stabler than Iran? Where else in the world would an assassinated prime minister be so quickly replaced?

If democracy succeeds in Egypt, other countries will follow. Should the democratic experiment in Egypt be hijacked by the military or anti-democratic Islamist groups, the revolution will fail elsewhere.

Particularly when we are a country where leaders turn over every few years and - I mean, in Russia, Vladimir Putin has been in charge for 17 years and counting, right? That's a disadvantage for us in terms of knowing the players, having a long-term plan, right?

While the armed forces have intervened in the political affairs of every other Central American country over the past fifty years, with disastrous results, in Costa Rica we have peacefully transferred power from one administration to the next every four years.

[I will] totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, nail by nail, brick by brick

He [Deng Xiaoping] said that he did not understand why we failed to grasp that the alternative was not democracy, but total chaos and risking all the reforms that had been achieved.

I deem we have still much to do and will of course strive for stabilizing the situation in the country and continuing reforms. I am confident in success. All we need at this point is public order.

The Liberal Party has dealt with the spill motion and now this matter is behind us, we think that when you elect a government, when you elect a prime minister, you deserve to keep that government and that prime minister until you have a chance to change your mind.

We need a regime change in this country.... If we launch a pre-emptive strike on Iraq we lose all moral authority.

The safety of our country demands an end to the doctrinaire, ineffective policies that currently grip Washington. Enough is enough! A safe America - a just America - that's what we want, that's what we need.

The last thing our country needs is four more years of Barack Obama, believe me. I've seen first hand the corruption and the sickness that has taken over our politics. You've seen it and I've seen it and we're all watching together.

We do not deny the possibility of peaceful [political] transition, but we are still awaiting the first case.

The president-elect [Donald Trump] finds himself in an unfamiliar and, perhaps, uncomfortable position. The enemies he's been fighting against are gone.

If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.

The whole point of constitutional democracy is the peaceful transfer of power; of Al Gore passing the baton to George W. Bush, even though that election was very suspiciously called.

It is not our place to decide who should lead the Iraqi people. If Saddam [Hussein] leaves or has to be forced out of power and a new regime brought in, a new leadership brought in, I am confident it will be some combination of people inside the country and outside the country.

An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen.