Gore Vidal Quotes

You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence democracy, and the other tyranny.

I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.

If Bangladesh succumbs to the rule of one family, it would be a major step backward for the region.

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

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

A country can live under a monarchy or a republic, with a parliamentary or a presidential system, under communism or fascism. But it cannot live in anarchy.

In oligarchies, militarism has leaped forward, while in those nations which have retained democracy militarism has waned.

It is important to remember there still exist other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them..

I have established the republic. But today it is not clear whether the form of government is a republic, a dictatorship, or personal rule.

Any president we choose becomes a czar in Russia. I don't want czars anymore. I don't want to be a czar myself. I want to be a democratic leader.

There's not a system better than another. There are some people better than others. I'm not anti-democracy, but there's no real system yet that has proven itself to be the right one.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. It is freedom and life or dictatorship and death.

I think it's a great shame that America stopped being a republic and became an empire.

Now one of two things is true: Either a republic is a desirable form of government, or else it is not.

There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.

The best Governments of the World have bin composed of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.

The main division in the world is between democratic and undemocratic countries.

The Turkish state has neither a crowned head nor a dictator.

It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or counsuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is a legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa.

One of the distinctions between democracy and other forms of government is that while democracy is messy on the surface, other forms of government are messy underneath.

Which is better, to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another.

I happen to be one of those people who do not believe in muIti-party democracy.

A small city, is better off with a government “for the people” than it is being ruled by a few people, or by only one. A larger city, according to the scale of magnitude, is better ruled by a few good rich men, rather then by the populace, or by one person. The largest cities or peoples are best ruled by a single king.