George Ayittey Quotes

New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance. The New York State government was at one time a national model. Now, unfortunately, it's a national disgrace. Sometimes, the corruption in Albany could even make Boss Tweed blush.

More than 40 years of African Independence have offered to the world a sad spectacle of a continent looted and humiliated with the complicity of its own sons and daughters.

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Most of the misery and poverty in the world is due to bad government.

In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim to the top

The root cause of poverty is social injustice and the bad government that abets it

The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive.

Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes, we have poverty. But I blame the government of India, the political establishment, for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty.

We are asking Nigerians for their cooperation. They shouldn't expect miracles to happen a couple of months after we've taken over because the destruction took so many years - 16 years of the ruling party's rule of this country.

The infrastructure, institutions and social fabric of Venezuela are deteriorating, and people realize the Chavez government has been the problem, not the solution.

The whole structure of African government, as far back as we know, was based on tyranny. One guy ran the show. Chiefs like Chaka and Mzilikazi committed terrible atrocities. That is the tradition from which modern African rulers spring. It won't change easily overnight.

Brazil has a lot of issues that are similar to a lot of countries in Latin America, but the dominant issue Brazil is dealing with is poverty and political corruption.

Palestinians are painfully aware that their government is rife with corruption.

We have more billionaires than any country but the United States. And Putin can imprison any one of them at a moment’s notice. Do you think he is poor?

The reigning model of economic globalization threatens earth’s life systems, undermines cultural integrity and diversity, and endangers the lives of many who are poor in order that some might consume exorbitantly and a few accumulate vast wealth.

The carelessness and negligence of the governments of the world, which wholly intent upon the care of aggrandizing themselves, at the same time neglect the happiness of the people and with it their own peace and security.

The system of government in Pakistan doesn't work. It's corrupt, and the people are tired of it.

Democracy has generally failed in Africa because to much power, too often, was concentrated in the hands of too few.

Both sides are so corrupt in Haiti that it doesn’t matter which one wins.

For the last 25 years we have lived with a playful, unreasoning absolutism that found fulfillment in empty appearances and a vain craving for status which the nation indulged for too long…. Absolutist government was responsible for our failure to produce statesmen, and instead only bureaucrats and lackeys.

Problems in our country haven't been caused by Donald Trump, America and its ambitions or CIA spies. Our problems are rooted in a bad government system, the lack of free elections, independent courts and freedom of speech.

The proximate cause of Iraq's unraveling was the increasing authoritarian, sectarian, and corrupt conduct of the Iraqi government and its leader after the departure of the last U.S. combat forces in 2011.

I am inheriting a country which has been badly ravaged by years of misrule and ineptitude. There has been a wide disconnect between the people and the government.

If bad and inexperienced politicians control power in Nigeria, my wealth may turn into poverty, and I am not ready to become a poor man.

Donald Trump is many things - a tantrum-throwing man-child and a wannabe strongman pining for his very own banana republic among them - but perhaps most of all he is a giant, melon-colored distraction from what is happening to our country under his watch.