Michael Ledeen Quotes

Looking back now, I realise why, as prime minister of Malaysia, I was described as a dictator. There were many things I did which were typically dictatorial.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.

Africa has more dictators per capita than any other continent.

Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.

I will never abuse power if elected.... This country [Russia] can never again fall under the influence of a dictator.

The army and the government needs a dictator.

Such is the terror--the crushing fear--which is inspired by one man over that multitude, which now submits to his decrees with a zeal, apparently as ardent, as it is certainly abject and submissive. There is not a complaint heard. The calm and dark waters of despotism are never disturbed by the slightest ripple. Not a breath of free thought or manly speech passes over them, but they lie dead and deep, into which every vestige of the people's liberty and freedom has sunk and disappeared.

Rule with an iron first will inevitably come to an end.

Some of the defendants say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil.

There's nothing to fear. I'm not a dictator.

Napoleon - the people who were becoming Napoleon's generals realized that for him, it was not about spreading freedom and revolution; it was about creating a new empire with Napoleon the dictator or the emperor.

Fascism is the consequence of economic jam and dictatorship is the product of Fascism, for Fascism cannot be managed save by a dictator.

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited.

Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will

You can't be a successful Dictator and design women's underclothing.

Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.

Vladimir Putin is a dictator. He's not a leader. Anybody who thinks otherwise doesn't know Russian history and they don't know Vladimir Putin. Hillary Clinton knows exactly who this guy is. John McCain said, I look in his eyes and I see KGB. And Hillary kind of has that same feeling.

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

The first country conquered by any dictator is his own country.

We've been saying Putin is a dictator for years who doesn't care about the law.

Nostalgia for dead tyrants and the longing for heroes are unhealthy, and they can result in the deification of a Saddam as easily as a Havel or Mandela.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.