Tariq Ali Quotes

In Russia an authoritarian leader is running the country. You can't fight Putin with elections because he controls them. That's why demonstrations are the most effective approach. Unfortunately Russia has sunk to this primitive level.

Governments are based pincipally on force and deception. Democratic governments are based chiefly on deception, other governments on force. And democratic governments, if you get too uppity, give up on the deception and resort to brute force, as a lot of us found out in the sixites. Those who didn't find out in the sixites will find out in the near future because we're going to have a rerun.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine is a good example of how people, who are robbed of their right to vote, can protest and put an end to dictatorship.

Sorry to have to be so blunt, but the country is in mortal danger from our present government and our liberty is already near dead because of this government. If you are too stupid to turn things around with your vote, there are people out here like me who are willing to turn things around with guns, force and violence. We hope our method does not become necessary.

Revolutions are not exportable: revolutions are created by oppressive conditions which Latin American countries exercise against their peoples.

The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.

Revolt by all means, but only on one issue at a time. To do more would be to confuse the whips.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighers did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany.

In a conquered country benevolence is not humanitarianism. It is a general political axiom that a conqueror must not inspire a good opinion of his benevolence until he has demonstrated that he can be severe with malefactors.

It takes truth, and it takes speaking truth to power, but because the stranglehold is so tight it seems to take something else - a real political threat.

This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,Was once thought honest.

Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.

Humankind will not be free until the last Kremlin commissar is strangled with the entrails of the last Pentagon chief of staff.

During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands.... The naive might call that democracy, but that's because they don't understand. The sophisticated understand that that's the crisis of democracy.

The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion. You'll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents.

In a position to make a difference, politicians and hypocrites they don't wanna listen.

There are two kinds of rebellion. The first is one in which the slave demands something that the tyrant has got. The second is one in which he demands something that the tyrant has not got.

The only true allegiance a politician has is to his own re-election.

The more fear confrontational activism can put into the heart of the political class, the better.

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

Like all of you I'm angry. I'm angry at what's happening to our nation. Citizens, it's time to take our country back.

In spring 1989...I saw the buildup of demonstrations from Chengdu to Tiananmen Square. It struck me that fear had been forgotten to such an extent that few of the millions of demonstrators perceived danger. Most seemed to be taken by surprise when the army opened fire.

Flee the country where a lone man holds all power: It is a nation of slaves.

Egypt is in the second day of angry street protests. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is calling for calm. Because nothing calms an enraged Arab country like a powerful woman ordering it around.