Mohamed ElBaradei Quotes

We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships.

The peaceful path out of totalitarianism has never been tested.

The transition from authoritarianism to democracy is not as easy as it appears in position papers – it is a rambunctious affair.

Establishing a stable democracy is a two stage process. First you get rid of the old regime, then you build a durable democratic replacement. Because the first stage is dramatic, many people think the game is over when the dictator is gone. But the second stage is more difficult. There are many examples of broad coalitions coming together to oust dictators but relatively few of them stayed together and agreed on what a new regime should look like.

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

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

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.

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

You don’t go from tyranny to democracy overnight.

What constitutes a republic is the total destruction of everything that stands in opposition to it.

I worry that a democratic transition in this period for a state like the U.a. E. would put, us in the throes of reactionary conservatism, probably for the next 30 or 40 years. I look at what is happening in Egypt and other places, and I wonder, do I need that kind of transition?

In a democracy, when you have 20 million people in the street, you resign. Unfortunately, we don’t have a process of recall or impeachment as you have. It was a popular uprising rejecting Mr. Morsi’s continuing in power. Unfortunately, people had to call on the army to intervene. The army had to intervene because short of that, we would have ended up in a civil war.

Stable liberal democracy requires more than just a shift in political forms; it also involves eliminating the antidemocratic social, cultural, and economic legacies of the old regime. Such a process takes lots of time and effort, over multiple tries. Historically, most initial transitions have been the beginning of a democratization process, not the end of it—something that the tortured histories of today’s mature liberal democracies make clear.

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.

Democracy is not a serial autocracy with each new autocrat being selected by a free and fair election.

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

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

The idea that if governments open up and become more democratic they will fall is a false dilemma.

The Arab spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence and everybody else wants it. How about us, when do we get it, when do we make our move? And you have a situation where someone has been in power for decades, where the integrity of elections, democracy and security have really not been debated or discussed and most people suspect that elections are rigged and that the democratic rotation that elections are supposed to ensure doesn't really happen. And when this goes on for a while you are sitting on a powder keg.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy is always very difficult, and if you read a history of any country that went through this, it wasn't easy. And, you know, you don't end dictatorship one day and next day you have fully fledged democracy.

It's actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system.

The so-called Arab Spring has proved that the fall of a Mubarak-like presidency does not mean the immediate rise of democracy. In spite of this, I am confident that Egypt will not return to an authoritarian governing system again, and that, with some time, it will achieve its democratic goals.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Latin America moved decisively away from military rule and toward civilian democracy.

With Taiwan, it took about 40 years to go from an authoritarian to a democratic society.