George Ayittey Quotes

We Africans continue to allow tyrannical regimes to impose themselves on us.

Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it.

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick.

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

Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.

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.

Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people.

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.

It is hard to look the other way when a dictator is being so cruel and violent with his own people.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

For me, Iran was paradise, and I believe it's a paradise still, but only if you don't have political problems. If you have a political problem, paradise turns into hell.

It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.

When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme. And to draw attention away from their social and economic failures, dictators place blame on other countries and other races, and stir the hatred that leads to violence. This status quo of despotism and anger cannot be ignored or appeased, kept in a box or bought off.

Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.

Dictatorship dooms labor. Labor dooms dictatorship.

It was not the year of union rather the year of division and force and oppression and violence. The imamate became like the kingdom of Chosroes and the caliphate like the tyranny of Caesar.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

He [Rafael Trujillo] had his torture chambers. He had his political assassinations. But he kept law and order, cleaned the place up, made it sanitary, built public works, and he didn’t bother the United States. So that was fine with us.

In the Middle East there are two methods of control: mass repression and mass bribery. In Syria they use mass repression; in Saudi Arabia, mass bribery. In Bahrain, a bit of both.

I visited Libya in September 1996 for the 27th anniversary of the 'revolution' - a military coup that a 27-year-old Gadhafi led to topple the monarchy and since which he has ruled. Some were optimistic that Gadhafi's 'revolution' could herald a new Libya, but it didn't take long for his brutality to stamp out any such hopes.

Throughout history, people with few educational or economic resources and little bargaining power have often looked to authoritarian, ruthless people to stand up for them.