David Frum Quotes

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.

In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism the latter adversary will, without question, win and will control the world. The era of democracy is finished and the democratic system bankrupt. There is not room in the world for two different systems or for two different economies.

Politics without responsibility IS fascism.

Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth.

We're approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention, totalitarianism. Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy's enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

My message is simple - freedom works a lot better than the authoritarian style of government.

Right now, we have no possibility of politics because we have a one-party state.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

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.

Zaire's one-party system is the most elaborate form of democracy

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

With the suppression of all political parties, the bases were laid for the totalitarian state.

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom.

I mean, I'm not a, you know, a fraidy cat. I mean, I am truly concerned in this country that we are moving towards fascism.

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

I don't believe that either fascism or communism is the solution or that they may come back on this earth.

Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.

It can't happen here is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.

Conservatives are giving up on democracy because it's not efficient. They want an autocratic regime.

Those who abhors democracy would rarely immigrate to an authoritarian state if they have to.

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.

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.

It's the story of an American who wants to become a dictator and goes to Europe with a sidekick to interview various Fascists to find out how the Nazis and Mussolini got into power.