#dictators

When the United States was founded, the very idea of a nation premised on democratic principles of freedom and tolerance was viewed by the vast majority of the world as an experiment doomed to fail. Dictatorships, monarchies, and theocracies had for many centuries ruled the world. ↗

— Eliot Spitzer

#democratic #dictatorships #doomed #experiment #fail

If we try to engineer outcomes, if we overturn tradition to make everyone the same, we ruin society. If we upset tradition to allow for an equal shot at the starting gate, everyone wins, except for the charlatans and would be dictators. ↗

— Ben Stein

#charlatans #dictators #engineer #equal #everyone

When the dictators and the opportunists are gone, the cross will still stand before us and something in us will say, 'That is the real thing.' ↗

— Ralph W. Sockman

#cross #dictators #gone #real #real thing

They have been talking about a dictatorship and they were right because there's a dictatorship and there's a government that has been fighting that dictatorship, the dictatorship of the media. ↗

— Rafael Correa

#because #been #dictatorship #fighting #government

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas. ↗

— Antonio Tabucchi

#doctrines #ideas #perfection #totalitarian

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern." [From the Preface] ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#big-business #bureaucracy #corporations #corporatocracy #dictatorship

There is, of course, nothing wrong in a program that aims to please everybody, except that as a rule it is a prelude to dictatorship. ↗

— J. Christopher Herold

#napoleon #age

Wir sind das Volk!" Dieser Satz hat uns gelehrt, dass wir, wenn wir unserer Sehnsucht glauben und ihr vertrauen, die Angst verlieren können. Eine Angst, die willfährige Dienerin jeder Art von nicht legitimierter Herrschaft ist, die uns ohnmächtig macht, die uns bindet. In dem Augenblick aber, in dem wir unsere Angst als Angst benennen und Anpassung und Angst als Geschwisterkinder erkennen, sind wir möglicherweise bereit zu erproben: Können wir auch ohne sie leben? In genau diesem Augenblick wachsen uns jene Kräfte zu, die eine ganze Gesellschaft verändern können. ↗

— Joachim Gauck

#civil-rights #courage #democracy #dictatorship #empowerment

You can't be a successful dictator and design women's underwear. One or the other. Not both. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#design

Is is true that dictators never dream because they can change their smallest fantasies into realities if they want to? ↗

— Alfred de Musset

#dictators #dreams #change