Rafael Correa Quotes

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

It is not true that Pena is 20 points above me. It's part of the management of the regime. They have control of the media, with few exceptions.

This is probably my last free statement through our news media, where the radio and television are already under the heel of the ruling political party of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. One would have thought radio and television were enough as propaganda tools.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists.

In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.

If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

I've always been fascinated by totalitarian regimes. I'm not an admirer of them.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

Dictators are interesting, no?

As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the '30s, East Germany in the '50s, Czechoslovakia in the '60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the '70s, China in the '80s and '90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers … call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

Ideas are dangerous; and the traffic in them has been the concern of all dictators.

If the American President had control of the media, his job would be much easier.

It was only a generation ago that we learned that the burning of books may precede the burning of people.

Even the most repressive regimes seek to maintain the fiction that they have the people’s interest at heart.

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers.

Donald Trump ran for autocrat, he didn't run for president. The first thing in autocrat does is take over the media, or alienate the media, which is what Trump is doing, he is doing it actively.