Political Autocracy Quotes

Despite elections and the experience of post-Soviet personal freedoms by the Russian people, the fate of democracy in Russia is perhaps more ambiguous now than at any time since the collapse of the Communist system.

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.…

Vladimir Putin is a dictator. He's not a leader. Anybody who thinks otherwise doesn't know Russian history and they don't know Vladimir Putin. Hillary Clinton knows exactly who this guy is. John McCain said, I look in his eyes and I see KGB. And Hillary kind of has that same feeling.

Why dictator Musharraf, raising the slogan of 'Pakistan First,' did not think about construction of Dasu and Basha dams?

I note that [Benazir] Bhutto demonstrates her own deep commitment to democracy by giving herself the title chairperson for life of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi grabbed full power for himself. Not even the pharaohs had so much authority, to say nothing of his predecessor Hosni Mubarak. This is a catastrophe - it a mockery of the revolution that brought him to power and an act that leads one to fear the worst.

The models that the other parties have used where you have a very powerful leader squashing any kind of independent ideas from the grass roots is not very attractive to the electorate.

If a prime minister can suspend parliament to deliver a 'no deal' Brexit, what will the government try to do next with no democratic scrutiny or oversight?

Africa's downfall has always been the cult of the personality. And their names always seem to begin with M. We've had Mobutu and Mengistu and I'm not going to add Meles to the list.

We have no functioning parliament in Egypt and months ago Mohammed Morsi assumed legislative functions. Now he's decided that there should be no opposition to the laws that he makes and that he is authorized to pass any national security measure. It is difficult to be more absolutist than that. And the constitutional convention - what a sad gathering; it threatens to send us back to the darkest period of the Middle Ages.

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.… You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?

The spirit of moderation in a state of overbearing power is a phenomenon which has not yet appeared, and which no wise man will expect ever to see.

In Europe, it appears that in the name of democracy, elites are pursuing an autocratic, centralized power, seeking economic control and social regimentation.

These last few years we've seen an unacceptable abuse of power, having a president whose priority is expanding his own power.

Autocratic leadership existed in Russia for many centuries, changing only its ideological colors and method of legitimization.

It is doubtful that President Mubarak or the Saudi Royal family will allow elections that might sweep them from office.

I would have to point out in the strongest terms the autocracy of the Liberal structure and the cowardice of its members. I have never seen in all my examination of politics so degrading a spectacle as that of all these Liberals turning their coats in unison with their Chief, when they saw the chance to take power.

One of the things you can learn from a figure like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is that if you take all the resources of the state for yourself, you don't build much of a constituency and you have to rely on repression, and repression is difficult in the modern world.

It is important to remember that some of the most serious thinkers once thought that democracy was not compatible with the cultures of Germany, Italy, Japan, Latin America and Russia.