Aleksandr Lebed Quotes

Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.

There is a heated debate in Turkey these days over whether the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is furthering democracy or rolling it back.

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.

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

There are a lot of benefits representative of government and it is far better than any type of dictatorial system and it is far better than a one-man rule situation.

Democracy must learn to defend itself.

It's actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

It would be hard to ignore the absence of democracy in any Arab nation.

We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships.

For about ten years now, the struggle for democracy and the respect of human rights has been in the focus point - if not a commodity - of political groups aiming to rise to power.

I think, at times of stress, you have to trust the pillars of democracy.

Almost every country in Africa has now instituted multi-party democracy.

We believe that this is not right for a democracy to make revolutions the beacon of promoting democracy.

In my personal opinion, Russia is no less democratic than it used to be. It is a democratic country. It is democratic enough.

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.

Over the years, I've come to recognize that democratization in Ethiopia is not just a matter of choice. It's a matter of national survival. I am deeply convinced that we either democratize and have a good chance of surviving, or if we fail to do so, we disintegrate.

We have not created any sort of democratic test for any nation.

The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.

The people want to go back to the time when democracy was in full bloom.

[We must] accelerate the reform of our political system, especially the building of a system of socialist democracy based on law …. Democracy is a worldwide trend …. If the Party doesn’t hold up the banner of democracy in our country, someone else will, and we will lose out.

Pakistan is a democracy. We cannot do anything against human rights.

Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt. Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?

The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the denial of essential powers of free government.

With all its faults, the American political system is probably the best political system in the world.

Executing the massive transformation they [the Chinese reform leaders] envision will take most of their political capital and will require firm political control, even as the reforms generate strong forces for social and political change.