Hugo Chavez Quotes

This democracy is not by the people, of the people, for the people. This democracy is about by the party high command, of the party high command, and for the party high command.

It's the tyranny of an oligarchy that I'm concerned about.

Violence is hidden within democratic structures because they are not radically democratic - Western democracy is merely a domestic convenience of consumerism.

On my travels around the world, I've met people in countries where democracy doesn't exist and if it does, they are intimidated into voting in a certain way.

Not a single Arab ruler is a willing participant in democratic reform. Their regimes are festooned with opportunists attached to their financial and political privileges.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

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.

Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.

The American citizen must be made aware that today a relatively small group of people is proclaiming its purposes to be the will of the People. That elitist approach to government must be repudiated.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy.

Government exists to protect the interests of the powerful from the will of the people.

... timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.

In most of the countries where the people don’t like their government, we are now allowed to ask whether people like their government.

Rather than living in a democracy, we are living in a benevolent oligarchy.

We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box.

Democracy has shown us that what is evil are the grosses têtes, the big heads, all big heads are greedy for money and power, they are ambitious that is the reason they are big heads and so they are at the head of the government and the result is misery for the people

Zaire's one-party system is the most elaborate form of democracy

There are many democracies in our Arab and Islamic countries, but unfortunately, they are all false democracies.

The willingness of local elites to cope with the uncertainty of fully competitive politics will thus be the ultimate factor in determining whether competitive authoritarianism proves a way station for democratic development or a safe house for autocrats. .

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence democracy, and the other tyranny.