Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

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.

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

We're going to have to forgive a great deal of the Soviet era debt. There's no question about that. Let's face up to that. We're going to have to put in money if Russia is really going to consolidate a democracy.

If I were a citizen of Russia, I would resist this communist dictatorship as vigorously as I have endeavored to resist the encroachment upon our democratic institutions in America. I hold that government of one class, denying the other classes the right to participate is tyranny.

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.

I probably will not live to see Turkey become an exemplary democracy, but I pray that the downward authoritarian drift can be stopped before it is too late.

The Germans should be the first to sympathize with us [Egyptians]. They know how difficult it is to build a democracy following a dictatorship, and they were the first to be critical of Morsi's anti-democratic policies.

Is it possible to tolerate the state order being undermined from morning to night because doing so is supposedly a democratic obligation.

Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy was not a continuation of Russian statehood, but its ultimate collpase.. They were mistaken.

So benevolent, enlightened, wise dictators are the most efficient form of government. The problem is what comes afterwards, right?

Any president we choose becomes a czar in Russia. I don't want czars anymore. I don't want to be a czar myself. I want to be a democratic leader.

Concentration of executive power, unless it's very temporary and for specific circumstances, let's say fighting world war two, it's an assault on democracy.

No one can take away the experience of Yeltsin's freedoms, but Russian democracy will never follow Western models: other authoritarian 'controlled democracies' - Turkey, Taiwan, Mexico - ultimately developed into democracies. But it took decades.

What Russia really needs is not gay rights but human rights, and the rule of law.

It's not mainland China that rubs me up the wrong way, it is the dictatorship that rubs me up the wrong way. It's the freedom that we Chinese people are not allowed that rubs me up the wrong way.

I've made the comment that democracies work slower than dictatorships. That's a true thing.

My duty is to call for free elections because there is an abuse of power, and we live in a dictatorship.

Whatever I read about Emergency as a part and process of my film, I can say, as a citizen of a democratic country called India, I am certainly not 'for' Emergency, a decision that snatched away the normalcy of human life for 21 months.

You look at something like Russia, or you look at something like China, where you actually allow free markets to go in. And you haven't seen the change that we, in the western world, would probably like. You still have a bit of a dictatorship - some people would say more than a bit of a dictatorship - in Russia and in China.

It's not up to one individual to decide, 'I'm going to dictate the outcome of what's going to happen legislatively.' That is not a democracy; it's an atrocity.

The world has to have zero tolerance for naked dictatorship.

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

You can't imagine a free market coupled with a dictatorship.

When [Vladimir] Putin, a former lieutenant-colonel in the KGB, became Russia's president on December 31, 1999 - eight years after the failed coup attempt against (then Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev, and eight years after the people had torn down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the hated founder of the KGB, in Moscow - it was admittedly a shock. Nevertheless, I decided to give Putin a chance. He seemed dynamic and capable of learning. But I had to bury my hopes after just a few months. He proved to be an autocrat - and, because the West let him do as he pleased, he became a dictator.

Any comparison between the military dictatorship and democracy can only come from those who do not value the Brazilian democracy.