Thomas Friedman Quotes

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.

Countries often democratize in clusters within regions of the world..

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.

Therefore, the question is not whether such democratization is possible, but instead how to meet the yearning of the masses in the Middle East for democracy; in other words, how to achieve democratization in the Middle East.

Deep in my heart, I still believe that the democratization of Russia and the democratization of Ukraine will proceed.

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

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

I would like to extend to you our deep appreciation and thanks for the position the United States has taken in support of the democratization process that has taken place in Tunisia, in Egypt, and what is attempting to take place in Libya.

Mexico has experimented with political change since the late 1980s.

Democracy in the Middle East has to be front-loaded. You have to have elections first and then try and build democratic institutions. You are not going to have the dictators and clerics of the Middle East allow you to build up democratic institutions slowly.

The peaceful path out of totalitarianism has never been tested.

In this situation [perestroika] problems and difficulties are unavoidable. For it involves far-reaching changes in everything—in the way of life, the attitude toward work and civic duty. We have chosen, definitively and irrevocably, the route leading to new forms of life: democratizing our society in all spheres.

What seemed uppermost in the minds of many political and civil .society' actors was the handing over of political power to the -patriots". some of them thieves and pillagers of the yesteryear turned "liberators" under the political nirvana of multi-partyism.

Unless the military of a fledgling democracy becomes Westernized, there democracy will not long last.

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.

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.

This public rally is aimed at informing the whole world of the will of the people... Our purpose is to show that the entire people entertain the keenest desire for a multiparty democratic system of government.

The Seanad question was one element of a process of change and reform to politics that government has been pursuing.

It’s not that Egypt doesn’t have a recipe for a democratic transition. It seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients.

In Burma, we need to find out what we have to do in order to keep the democratization process on track. Economic reforms have to be taken one by one. You see it's not just speed that's important, it's sequencing as well. You've got to get the speed right; you have to get the sequencing right.

We have been engaging the Government of Swaziland for some time on this issue of the democratization of Swaziland. In particular, I had asked the Deputy President to engage the Government on this and, indeed, he has. We will continue to do this, because we do think that, as has been communicated to the Government of Swaziland, that Swaziland must go through this democratization process, a constitution-making process in which they have been engaged for some time, and really seek a national consensus about it.

Several experts on the Middle East concur that the Middle East cannot be democratized.

I am totally in favour of reform - but it must be reform that changes the nature of British politics, not simply the makeup or operation of parliament.

I regard the endorsement of both the objective and a method - which can differ from one country to another- of democratization by the parties in the region as a basic requisite of democratization in the Middle East.

Similarly, gender-equality, supremacy of law, political participation, civil society, and transparency are among the indispensable elements that are the imperatives of democratization.