Kirti Kulhari Quotes

I have lived under totalitarian Communism, so I prize freedom as much as anyone and have long fought for freedom of conscience and speech.

I believe in it so passionately because anywhere you look in the world, where governments become too big or become authoritarian, speech and expression is one of the first fundamental freedoms to go.

In the United States, we can do almost anything we want. It's not like Egypt, where you're going to get murdered by the security forces.

It's not mainland China that rubs me up the wrong way, it is the dictatorship that rubs me up the wrong way. It's the freedom that we Chinese people are not allowed that rubs me up the wrong way.

One thing that is great about India is the freedom to speak and the spaces available in our democracy to protest which doesn't exist in many places in the world.

In any nation in which people's rights have been subordinated to the rights of the few, in any totalitarian nation, the first institution to be dismantled is the jury. I was, I am, afraid.

If a nation wishes, it can have both free elections and slavery.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation - namely, life, liberty and justice for all.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.

Freedom of speech, freedom to criticize pillars of government, freedom to form parties and freedom of the press within the framework of the constitution are among the absolute rights of the public.

Protect the people from the oppression of dictatorships.

There is no such thing as a liberal dictatorship, because a dictator just cannot afford to be liberal.

Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered Expression

The position of Princes is no doubt difficult in these times, but it would be much less so if they would behave honorably and straightforwardly, giving the people gradually those privileges which would satisfy all the reasonable and well-intentioned, and would weaken the power of the Red Republicans; instead of that, reaction and a return to all the tyranny and oppression is the cry and the principle—and all papers and books are being seized and prohibited, as in the days of Metternich!..

Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.

Our liberty cannot depend on the good intention of those in power.

The surest way to make our youth suspect that there may be something in Communism would be for the government to outlaw it.

There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.

If the Chinese government gets carried away with denying basic rights, then there will be a pushback from within.

We live in a democratic country, and I take great pride in saying that I'm from India, a country where democracy is worshipped and freedom of expression is part and parcel of any person's fundamental right.

I grew up under a dictatorship. I knew what it meant for people to not have the ability to freely express themselves.