Abdullah II of Jordan Quotes

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

It was not the year of union rather the year of division and force and oppression and violence. The imamate became like the kingdom of Chosroes and the caliphate like the tyranny of Caesar.

Violence, indeed, is the child of suppression.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.

Despotism is a long crime.

When anarchy is declared, the first thing we do, let's kill all the anarchists.

A peace that depends on fear is nothing but a suppressed war.

Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle, every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished.

You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

The use of force to liberate people is very different from the use of force to suppress or control them, or even to defeat them.

Unless something drastic is done very soon, then bloodshed and violence are going to happen…almost inevitably… A people made desperate by despair and injustice and oppression will use desperate means.

… the greatest tyrant in the world; the greatest terrorist in the world.

There will never be quietness in this country till half a dozen of you be hanged or banished.

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

Government violence can only do one thing and that is to breed counter-violence.

We dare not supress thoughts, but when they are expressed through violence, like the idea that power comes from the barrel of a gun, they must be dealt with and met accordingly.

In the process of the Arab Spring, we have unfortunately seen a development in Syria where the regime has been oppressing its people.

The violent rioting that is sometimes now being called protesting - it makes the emotions so high that you almost cannot see the insults and injuries that are the people are suffering.

History tells you if dictators are not stopped in time, they cause more damage.

A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred.

I not only weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage.

It's got too much hard work slapping them and telling them to shut up.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.