Jose Angel Gurria Quotes

We had a revolution 2 years ago, and we see a people moving from a completely authoritarian system into a democracy. They don’t know how democracy works. They don’t know the ingredients of a democracy.

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.

We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships.

One is actually the democracy here, you know, people are, people assume that this election means that there is democracy in Pakistan. There is no democracy.

You don’t go from tyranny to democracy overnight.

Let's not pretend we have too much of a democracy here, because we don't.

Spain's constitution was introduced to cement democracy after Franco's dictatorship, but this government is exploiting its wording as a means to deny us our right to vote.

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.

Democracy will not come to Mexico as the result of supposedly optimal policies prescribed by self-appointed saviors bent on economic stabilization.

It is an essential tenet of our whole representative form of government, the idea that there should not be some tyranny which makes it so nobody can even have a chance to vote.

History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.

It's actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

As I understand I took most so-called democratic states about 200 years on average to build their democracies. That is why, when we go to sleep under totalitarian rule and wake up in a democracy, it makes me laugh.

It has been well over half a century and I'm glad to say we have taken the right path from authoritarianism to democracy and this is a road of no return.

The main division in the world is between democratic and undemocratic countries.

One of the distinctions between democracy and other forms of government is that while democracy is messy on the surface, other forms of government are messy underneath.

If when I die I am still a dictator I will certainly go down into the oblivion of all dictators. If, on the other hand, I succeed in establishing a stable base for a democratic government, I will be remembered forever in every home in China.

We cannot impose democracy where it has no constituency.

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.

We’re trying to create the first democracy in the Arab world.

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

Once confined to a handful of wealthy countries, it [democracy] became, in a short period of time, the most popular political system in the world. In 1900, only 10 countries were democracies. By mid-century, the number had increased to 30…. By 2005 fully 119 of the world’s 190 countries had become democracies.

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.

Undoubtedly, a democratic state without an alternative is a danger to democracy itself.