Whether you are related to a political party or love reading about politics, you can explore the popular dictatorship quotes from the famous people.
In dictatorship or autocracy, one person or a small group has all the power, and others have little or no say. It kind of a system where leaders can make decisions without asking the people. Whether it’s good or not, let’s understand with these quotes on dictatorship.
The Dictatorship Quotes from From People
1. “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” ― George Orwell
2. “Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.” ― Bruce Coville
3. “Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.” – Plato
4. “When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.” – Harry S Truman
5. “The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.” – Fidel Castro
6. “When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.” – Victor Hugo
7. “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
8. “A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it.” – George W. Bush
9. “When there is oppression and dictatorship, by not speaking out, we lose our dignity.” – Asma Jahangir
10. “The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.” – Charles Bukowski
11. “Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.” – Tony Blair
12. “Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.” – Ayn Rand
13. “Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.” – Wole Soyinka
14. “I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.” – Richard Branson
15. “The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.” – Niels Bohr
16. “When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.” – Will Duran
17. “It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.” -Corazon Aquino
18. “Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.” – William Blum
19. “Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people.” – Richard Perle
20. “Music should never be a dictatorship. It should be a symbiotic relationship between the musician and the audience.” – Chris Thile
21. “In a dictatorship there is no choice, the elections are controlled, the police are the military, fear equals control, speech is suppressed, the economy is looted, the people are slaves.” – Alex Jones
22. “Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.” – Gene Sharp
23. “The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy of dictatorship.” – Fidel Castro
24. “If you begin to consider yourself solely responsible to a political party, you’re half-way to a dictatorship.” – Clement Attlee
25. “All democracies turn into dictatorships – but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.” – George Lucas
26. “Every one of the world’s dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.” – Harold H. Greene
27. “Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.” – Winston Churchill
28. “In a democracy, you believe it or not; in a dictatorship, you believe it or else.” –
Evan Esar
29. “A totalitarian dictatorship cannot explain; it can only suppress.” – Robert Payne
30. “Dictatorship is like a giant beech-tree – very magnificent to look at in its prime, but nothing grows underneath it.” – Stanley Baldwin
31. “In dictatorships you need courage to fight evil; in the free world you need courage to see evil.” – Natan Sharansky
32. “The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.” – Edward Teller
33. “I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.” – Noam Chomsky
34. “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” – Pope Benedict XVI
35. “Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law.” – Alan Bullock
36. “Dictatorship and oppression will not prevail forever. The people will rise, and freedom will return.” – Lech Walesa
37. “Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands.” – Ralph Peters
38. “A dictatorship is a government that doesn’t do anything but kill people and take their stuff.” – L. Neil Smith
39. “A dictatorship is a country where they have taken the politics out of the politics.” – Ralph Nader
40. “The difference between a dictator and a true leader is that one rules by fear, while the other leads through inspiration.” – Myles Munroe
41. “Dictatorship is a constant lecture instructing you that your feelings, your thoughts, and desires are of no account, that you are a nobody and must live as you are told by other people who desire and think for you.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer
42. “The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” – Thomas Paine
43. “In a dictatorship, censorship is used; in a democracy, it’s birthed through social pressure and conformity.” – Jeffrey Tucker
44. “A dictatorship is like a silencer on a gun; it may momentarily quiet the noise, but the violence remains.” – Jarod Kintz
45. “A dictator is one who can always count on a warm welcome from those he has kept in poverty and fear.” – Tom Wicke
46. “Dictatorships do cut down on rape, and pillage, not to mention sexual harassment, by the simple expedient of sending people to jail for such activities, where such amenities as conjugal visits and group showers are not available.” – Barbara Ehrenreich
47. “Dictatorship is a constant war against the mind of the governed.” – Steve Maraboli
48. “The great dictatorships are the work of the people, not of a single individual.” – Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
49. “In a dictatorship, one voice is enough in the decision-making process. In a democracy, one voice is not enough.” – Marty Rubin
The Best Quotes on Dictatorship and Dictators
50. “Dictators can always consolidate power by making the population more afraid of each other than of the government.” – Alexis Goldstein
51. “Dictatorship is the violation of the dignity of one individual or a group of individuals. Democracy is the respect for the dignity of all individuals.” – Aung San Suu Kyi
52. “A dictatorship is like a prison where you are both the guard and the prisoner.” – Patrice Lumumba
53. “We have to continue our progressive struggle and defeat the conspiracies of dictatorship.” – Bilawal Bhutto Zardari
54. “No dictatorship can be sustained within the context of an information revolution.” – Li Lu
55. “It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.” – A. N. Wilson
56. “Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.” – Mario Vargas Llosa
57. “We must learn, and especially we Germans, that resistance is not only possible and allowed in dictatorships. There is resistance that man must perform every day.” – Heinrich Boll
58. “I grew up in Mexico City at a time when the country was a repressive one-party dictatorship almost wholly dependent on oil revenues.” – Bret Stephens
59. “It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship.” – Henry A. Wallace
60. “Literature has its own life, even in a dictatorship like the Soviet Union.” – Heinrich Boll
61. “Political dictatorships take possession not just of money and belongings but of narrative.” – Hisham Matar
62. “Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it.” – Aung San Suu Kyi
63. “To us, anyone who opposes dictatorship is our friend. Those who support it, our enemy.” – Li Lu
64. “Majoritarian is when a majority takes a decision. It is not dictatorship. It is about which issue is major.” – Prakash Raj
65. “The world has to have zero tolerance for naked dictatorship.” – Asma Jahangir
66. “I’ve made the comment that democracies work slower than dictatorships. That’s a true thing.” – James Gosling
67. “What you had at the time was a dictatorship with the team owners.” – Ted Lindsay
68. “The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship.” – Frederick Forsyth
69. “Fascism is not the result of dictatorship.” – John T. Flynn
70. “We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships.” – Tom Tancredo
71. “Only a free West can help the prisoners of today’s left- and right-wing dictatorships.” – Barbara Amiel
72. “Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.” – Shimon Peres
73. “We have gone through everything as a nation – partition, dictatorship, and even anarchy.” – Fatos Nano
74. “I worry about a democracy having nuclear weapons as much as a dictatorship having nuclear weapons.” – Mohamed ElBaradei
75. “I came from two harsh dictatorships, Nazi and Stalinist. I never thought of becoming a writer as such, yet in a lucid moment, I recognised what I had to do.” – Imre Kertesz
76. “Dictatorship is the imposition of a single man’s will on many, but democracy is the imposition of the will of many on an individual, or on a few.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton
77. “A dictatorship is a nation in which the will of one man or a small group is enforced without regard to the rights of the individual or the minority.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
78. “In a dictatorship, the leaders are above the law. In a democracy, the law is above the leaders.” – David Boaz
79. “Dictatorship is a product of the underlying problems of society. It’s the symptom of the disease; it’s not the disease.” – Mohamed ElBaradei
80. “Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.” – Jorge Luis Borges
81. “Dictators are rulers who always look good until the last ten minutes.” – Jan Masaryk
82. “In a dictatorship, there is no choice, the elections are controlled, the police are the military, fear equals control, speech is suppressed, the economy is looted, and the people are slaves.” – Donald Rumsfeld
83. “Dictatorship is founded on deception and fear; democracy on trust and confidence.” – Bruce F. Meyer
84. “Dictatorship and oppression will never prevail over the human spirit, yearning for freedom and justice.” – Mairead Corrigan Maguire
85. “A dictator is like a phoenix; they always seem to rise from the ashes of a nation’s despair.” – Jeremy Aldana
86. “The price of dictatorship is unmeasured human suffering.” – Jacob K. Javits
87. “Dictatorship is not a product of mass support; it operates against the will of the people.” – G. William Domhoff
88. “Dictators are masters of creating a climate of fear.” – Manuel Tohar
89. “Dictatorship is the assertion of the absolute power of an individual over others.” – Salvatore Quasimodo
90. “Dictatorship is a form of government that has proven throughout history to be a dismal failure.” – Ron Paul
91. “A dictator is a man who listens to horses instead of people.” – André Malraux
92. “Dictators are never as strong as they tell you they are. They are never as omnipotent as they tell you they are.” – Gene Sharp
93. “In a dictatorship, facts are malleable. In a democracy, they are sacrosanct.” – Megan McCafferty
94. “The key to a successful dictatorship is to suppress all dissent and opposition.” – Ha-Joon Chang
95. “In a dictatorship, liberty is generally the first casualty.” – Salman Rushdie
96. “Dictatorship is a state of affairs in which you can’t sit in your own bedroom with the door closed.” – Guy Davenport
97. “You can’t imagine a free market coupled with a dictatorship.” – Li Lu
98. “My duty is to call for free elections because there is an abuse of power, and we live in a dictatorship.” – Juan Guaido
99. “It is vital to speak up in a democracy. Otherwise we are living in dictatorships.” -Katharine Gun
100. “Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight.” – Jalal Talabani
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I’m Murshid Akram, a introvert who love reading and sharing positive vibes through quotes and sayings. I believe with love and compassion we can make this world a better place.