Reuven Rivlin 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.

It's actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships.

The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.

Russia does not and cannot have any political choice but democracy. I want to say, and even stress, that we share those universal democratic principles taken around the whole world.

Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.

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.

Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.

We are no longer facing a contest betweenDemocracy and Communism. The conflict today is between Democracy and authoritarianism.

What I find very painful are all these charges that democracy is really shaken in Poland, that we have been switching into some authoritarian regime.

Democracy must learn to defend itself.

The Americans' position is clear: we promote democracy.

Democracy in Yemen did not stop, instead it is in a continuous development, there is no other way to follow rather than democracy, it is our national way for building up our country, it was not imposed on us by others.

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

I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.

I have a lot of respect for countries where the practice of democracy is highly developed. I think, however, that each country has to have its own specific features of democracy.

Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight.

We are losing the democracy that we're trying to sell in the Mideast and everywhere else right here in our own nation.

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

I think, as a general matter, clearly, the United States globally supports the development of democracy and the democratic yearnings of all people.

Asia's governments come in two broad varieties: young, fragile democracies - and older, fragile authoritarian regimes.

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.

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.

What if democracy does not serve liberty? This question is seldom asked in the West, where democracy is often seen as synonymous with liberalism.