Mohamed ElBaradei Quotes

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

The peaceful path out of totalitarianism has never been tested.

Getting rid of the dictator is only a first step in establishing a free society. The dictatorship must also be disassembled.

We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships.

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.

Establishing a stable democracy is a two stage process. First you get rid of the old regime, then you build a durable democratic replacement. Because the first stage is dramatic, many people think the game is over when the dictator is gone. But the second stage is more difficult. There are many examples of broad coalitions coming together to oust dictators but relatively few of them stayed together and agreed on what a new regime should look like.

After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy is always very difficult, and if you read a history of any country that went through this, it wasn't easy. And, you know, you don't end dictatorship one day and next day you have fully fledged democracy.

A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.

The raids on Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the Adenauer Foundation, and other groups helping Egyptians move toward respect for democratic politics and human rights were of a piece with the practices of Hosni Mubarak - only bolder and more repressive.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Latin America moved decisively away from military rule and toward civilian democracy.

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.

China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

With Taiwan, it took about 40 years to go from an authoritarian to a democratic society.

It has been well over half a century and I'm glad to say we have taken the right path from authoritarianism to democracy and this is a road of no return.

On Jan. 30, millions of Iraqis will cast ballots in the country's first fair and free election in decades, marking continued progress in Iraq's transition toward a country built on the pillars of democracy and freedom for all.

In the 1990s, I was among those Indonesians who demanded and celebrated the departure of our own autocrat, Suharto, and I joined the new government when he left.

What the people of Zimbabwe did in almost impossible conditions was to show that you can defeat the dictator and you can defeat the dictator in peaceful, non violent peaceful change. That five minutes in the ballot box on the 29 th of March 2008 was freedom and our people used pens instead of bombs and they struck a blow at the dictator. So we have been vindicated. The people of Zimbabwe have been vindicated. Everything that we have been saying in the last 15 years that: We have a dictator; that this dictator is unpopular and that we want change - has been vindicated

A military government may make a nation great, but it cannot make them free.

I worry that a democratic transition in this period for a state like the U.a. E. would put, us in the throes of reactionary conservatism, probably for the next 30 or 40 years. I look at what is happening in Egypt and other places, and I wonder, do I need that kind of transition?

We had a revolution 2 years ago, and we see a people moving from a completely authoritarian system into a democracy. They don’t know how democracy works. They don’t know the ingredients of a democracy.

I call on the Iranian people: it is not too late to replace the corrupt regime and return to your glorious Persian heritage, a heritage of culture and values and not of bombs and missiles... How can a nation allow a regime to instill fear, take away the people's freedom and shock the young generation that seeks its way out of the dictatorial Iran.

If democracy succeeds in Egypt, other countries will follow. Should the democratic experiment in Egypt be hijacked by the military or anti-democratic Islamist groups, the revolution will fail elsewhere.

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

In Latin America, in the past, it was almost impossible to guarantee democracy. There were military dictatorships, and nowadays there are not so many military dictatorships. Although we have a dictator in Honduras, as a result of a coup, now as a president, he is almost the only one I would say. But again led or managed, gestated by the U.S. government.