Benazir Bhutto Quotes

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

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

History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.

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 free world should not wait for dictatorial regimes to consent to reform.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.

The ultimate failures of dictatorship cost humanity far more than the temporary failures of democracy.

There is a very long history of oppression in the Arab world, particularly in the states he mentions: Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, as well as in Sudan and Tunisia. These regimes are not based on democracy and their legitimacy comes from military dictatorships or inherited systems. The basic right of an individual to voice his or her opinion is not granted in any kind of form in the Arab world.

Protect the people from the oppression of dictatorships.

Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

I will never abuse power if elected.... This country [Russia] can never again fall under the influence of a dictator.

To trample democracy with one’s feet and to give power to a single man over almost eighty million people is so terrible that one can very probably tremble over the events which will come here.

The spectacle which confronts all Europe today is a great conflict between democracy and dictatorship.

That's how dictators get started.

Dictators don't come from elections.

Trump can embrace dictators and gulags, but we the people stand for human rights, for dignity, for keeping families together.

When dictators and tyrants seek to destroy the freedoms of men, their first target is the legal profession and through it the rule of law.

No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine

The notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them.

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Freedom is contagious. That's why despots fear it so much.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.