Dictatorship Quotes
Firsthand reflections on life under authoritarian rule.
These quotes come from people who lived through authoritarian rule, describing how censorship forced entire societies to communicate in careful metaphors. Others recall risking personal safety just to protest for democratic change. Related themes continue in our Democracy collection.
No one argues that we should have imposed a dictatorship in Afghanistan having liberated the country. Similarly, we weren't about to impose a dictatorship in Iraq having liberated the country.
To Westerners, the students at Tiananmen may have given an impression of a solid and energetic consensus against dictatorship and for democracy, but they were an egotistical and fractious lot, riven by disagreements over tactics and money.
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Turkey's regime is fast degenerating into outright dictatorship, emboldened by the imminent ascent of Donald Trump to the most powerful position on Earth.
Pope John Paul II not only visited Nigeria twice but stood by the country in its fight against dictatorship and injustice.
I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
I have established the republic. But today it is not clear whether the form of government is a republic, a dictatorship, or personal rule.
In Spain, after the dictatorship, thanks to Pedro Almodovar, many artists put on the streets through art a big explosion of freedom.
Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.
I think the only positive thing that came from Uruguay's dictatorship was the spread of Montevideo natives around the world, and I continued writing about them from my various places of exile.
Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship.
Many people - when they think about North Korea and the dictatorship, or the military or nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles, those things - tend to forget ordinary citizens are living there.
From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s - the era of military dictatorship when South Korea was rebuilding itself from a postwar economic basket case to a humming, modern nation - military schools were the track of choice for ambitious...
I first went to Indonesia in 2001 for six months. I was to help a community of plantation workers to make a film documenting and dramatizing the struggle to organize a union in the aftermath of the Suharto dictatorship.
It's funny to see a film in Spain with a lot of violence because we don't have a lot of violence. Well, of course, we have violence, some murders, some terrorism and a lot of things. We have suffered a...
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This page reflects the lived experience of restricted freedoms rather than abstract political theory. Explore more in our Freedom and Government collections.
