Quotes About Authoritarian

#1. We have created stability, which is a necessary condition for development. But I can't call this system authoritarian.

Vladimir Putin

#2. The problem in Burma is the problem in Egypt, the problem you refer to in Yemen, and the problem in a lot of these countries in the world: that you can get stuck in the process of transition, in what's been called a competitive authoritarian ... a pseudo democratic regime.

Larry Diamond

#3. The wholesale corruption of social relationships, even the most intimate, is an essential part of Shakespeare's chilling exposure of authoritarian politics.

William Shakespeare

#4. Libraries have had a long history of dealing with authoritarian organizations demanding reader records - who's read what - and this has led to people being rounded up and killed.

Brewster Kahle

#5. The thread of culture that runs through the entire history of punk is also a dedication to challenging the authoritarian.

Greg Graffin

#6. The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudice.

Albert Einstein

#7. Faster roads are not always safer roads - and virtually all societies, democratic or authoritarian, prefer safety over speed, even if many of their citizens enjoy fast driving.

Evgeny Morozov

#8. I would describe fundamentalism as, first of all, a movement led almost invariably by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and who have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.

Jimmy Carter

#9. The politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

#10. There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power.

Eugenio Montale

#11. The Popular Unity government represented the first attempt anywhere to build a genuinely democratic transition to socialism a socialism that, owing to its origins, might be guided not by authoritarian bureaucracy, but by democratic self-rule.

Salvador Allende

#12. What royal families are very good at doing is surviving and reinventing themselves. That's true whether it's a constitutional monarchy in Britain or an authoritarian monarchy.

Robert Lacey

#13. Obama is a statist. He's an authoritarian. He doesn't want to govern; he wants to rule.

Rush Limbaugh

#14. I ask myself whether Russia is moving in the direction of democracy. I don't believe it is! Bit by bit, Russia is slipping back into an authoritarian empire.

Vladimir Sorokin

#15. My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

Pope Francis

#16. England has become a squalid, uncomfortable, ugly place ... an intolerant, racist, homophobic, narrow-minded, authoritarian, rat-hole run by vicious, suburban-minded, materialistic philistines.

Hanif Kureishi

#17. The underlying reason for this is the Europeans' fear that Islamists could gain power. Many still consider authoritarian Arab regimes to be the lesser evil.

Alvaro De Vasconcelos

#18. Democracy can only spring from practising it early, and democratic action was not to expected from young people brought up under a close authoritarian system.

Dora Russell

#19. Frequently mentioned topics populate the mind even as others slip away from awareness. In turn, what the media choose to report corresponds to their view of what is currently on the public's mind. It is no accident that authoritarian regimes exert substantial pressure on independent media.

Daniel Kahneman

#20. In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.

Christiane Amanpour

#21. The stuff that's going on is just so over-the-top, with the banking crisis and destroying the Gulf of Mexico, and the outrage hasn't quite caught up with the people yet. But when it does, I think you're going to see really virulent anti-authoritarian kind of comedy coming out.

Adam McKay

#22. We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.

Ai Weiwei

#23. The Greek Civil War led to three decades of illegality for the Left, which had to operate under front organisations. The Cold War entrenched in power - backed by the US and Britain - a monarchist, authoritarian right for whom political violence was customary.

Anonymous

#24. But by the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian. The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable.

George Orwell

#25. You don't get the fox to be in charge of the chicken coop. You don't give the outgoing regime - which has been practicing dictatorship, is an authoritarian system, it's a bunch of military people - the task of changing Egypt into a second republic, a new Egypt with democracy, freedom, rights, etc.

Mohamed ElBaradei

#26. In its current form, globalization cannot be sustained. Democratic societies will not support it. Authoritarian leaders will fear to impose it.

John Sweeney

#27. The strictly theoretical and so attractive dream of possible equality had been traded for the worst authoritarian nightmare in history when it was applied to reality, understood, with good reason (more, in this case), as the only criterion of truth.

Leonardo Padura

#28. In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.

Wendy Kaminer

#29. The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people.

Wilhelm Reich

#30. Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations.

Jurgen Habermas

#31. As every authoritarian regime knows, association can be a dangerous thing. From discussion it is only a few steps to action ...

Ann Scott

#32. For all their faults, right-wing authoritarian regimes more easily accept democratic reforms than left-wing totalitarian states.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

#33. Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power.

Ian Bremmer

#34. Women's liberation, if it abolishes the patriarchal family, will abolish a necessary substructure of the authoritarian state, and once that withers away Marx will have come true willy-nilly, so let's get on with it.

Germaine Greer

#35. I want a revamped feminism. Putting the vamp back means the lady must be a tramp. My generation of the Sixties rebels wanted to smash the bourgeois codes that had become authoritarian totems of the Fifties ... Thirty years later, we're still stuck with the ["nice" girl].

Camille Paglia

#36. Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.

Theodor W. Adorno

#37. The hope in the hearts of millions of national socialists can be fulfilled only by an authoritarian government.

Franz Von Papen

#38. It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#39. Asia's governments come in two broad varieties: young, fragile democracies - and older, fragile authoritarian regimes.

Paul Samuelson

#40. There's no authoritarian structure at Reed College, but the education is conservative. So what you have is a lot of students who are very authentically looking for truth.

Donald Miller

#41. Obviously, Turkey is not a typical authoritarian regime, and obviously it's very important that there are free elections. But it's also obvious that this is not a liberal, mature democracy. This is why I call Turkey a wobbly democracy. At any time, it can tip over and fall down.

Elif Safak

#42. Someone is going to figure out how to make this work and when they do, all the anti-gambling, over-regulating authoritarian governments will be exposed as emperors without clothes. It might not be obvious that this is even happening at first, since these systems are by definition stealthy affairs.

Calvin Ayre

#43. There's a tradition in the history of dissent in authoritarian countries of a certain kind of dissident, and their form of dissent is to live their lives as normally as possible.

Evan Osnos

#44. The working class had imposed upon them a sterile and authoritarian educational system which mirrored the ethos of the corporate workplace.

Anthony M. Platt

#45. I have always had severe problems with Austrians ... Musical, churchy, uptight ... nice legs ... hypocritical ... authoritarian ... always insist their dustbins are very clean.

Peter Greenaway

#46. Many people prefer to treat themselves as objects, and they are relieved by an opportunity to deliver themselves into the hands of an authoritarian figure who will make the decisions for them, once they have made the decision that they want to be changed.

Herbert Spiegel

#47. Free nations of the world cannot allow Taiwan, a beacon of democracy, to be subdued by an authoritarian China.

Nick Lampson

#48. I've never conspired to overthrow the government; all I did was report on the Arab Spring and suggest that something similar might happen in Ethiopia if the authoritarian regime didn't reform.

Eskinder Nega

#49. I was slight in frame and lacked the instant authoritarian standing that a Winchester did.

Jon Bassoff

#50. Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words, the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership, Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe.

Michael D. Higgins

#51. The true religion is monastic, ascetic, authoritarian, hierarchical.

Nicolas Gomez Davila

#52. This country is becoming increasingly authoritarian. It's based on capital punishment.

Kate Millett

#53. The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations.

Glenn Greenwald

#54. How could one want an equalitarian and free society to issue from an authoritarian organisation? It is impossible.

James Guillaume

#55. Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will.

Ludwig Von Mises

#56. My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.

Lynne Stewart

#57. It is noteworthy that at a time when every religious sanction of authority has vanished, we live in a very authoritarian epoch.

Nikolai A. Berdyaev

#58. It is no secret that many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian, and some of the so-called 'Islamic regimes' such as Saudi Arabia, Iran - and the worst case was the Taliban in Afghanistan - they are pretty authoritarian. No doubt about that.

Mustafa Akyol

#59. Irony and hip ennui are extremely authoritarian.

David Foster Wallace

#60. during transitions to democracy, nations often undergo political convulsions that make them hard to govern, thus feeding nostalgia for their old authoritarian order.

Moises Naim

#61. Journalists were never intended to be the cheerleaders of a society, the conductors of applause, the sycophants. Tragically, that is their assigned role in authoritarian societies, but not here - not yet.

Chet Huntley

#62. The question, then, for Western companies, as much as for Western governments, is to decide whose side they are on: the Chinese officials who like to define their culture in a paternalistic, authoritarian way, or the large number of Chinese who have their own ideas about freedom.

Ian Buruma

#63. The inner me was always under attack by authority, by the way my parents wanted me to be brought up, by these English schools I went to. So I've always felt this kind of anti-authoritarian strain in me, pushing to express itself despite the obstacles.

Edward Said

#64. For me, religion is serious business - a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny and humble pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom.

Katha Pollitt

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

Ma Ying-jeou

#66. Despite their authoritarian light show, those ice-cream trucks of death couldn't do any more for Perkus's murdered infatuation, his crushed crush, than could keening Greek chorus, or a moaning witch doctor.

Jonathan Lethem

#67. Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.

Cory Doctorow

#68. My position and the state will never allow me to become a dictator, but an authoritarian style of rule is characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it. You need to control the country, and the main thing is not to ruin people's lives.

Alexander Lukashenko

#69. The words we spoke and our entire punk performance aimed to express our disapproval of a specific political event: the patriarchs' support of Vladimir Putin, who has taken an authoritarian and anti-feminist course.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

#70. Authoritarian systems evolve. Authoritarianism in the Internet Age is not your old Cold War authoritarianism.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#71. Those who abhors democracy would rarely immigrate to an authoritarian state if they have to.

Joe Chung

#72. Public schools are government-established, politician- and bureaucrat-controlled, fully politicized, taxpayer-supported, authoritarian socialist institutions. In fact, the public-school system is one of the purest examples of socialism existing in America.

Tom L. Johnson

#73. The so-called Arab Spring has proved that the fall of a Mubarak-like presidency does not mean the immediate rise of democracy. In spite of this, I am confident that Egypt will not return to an authoritarian governing system again, and that, with some time, it will achieve its democratic goals.

Ahmed Zewail

#74. The Strict Father (or "authoritarian") model is supposed to make a child strong and better able to function socially. It is supposed to make children into effective leaders. But, in fact, it has the opposite effect.

George Lakoff

#75. In many cases, Obama's exercise of authoritarian power is criminal. His executive branch is responsible for violations of the Arms Export Control Act in shipping weapons to Syria, the Espionage Act in Libya, and IRS law with regard to the targeting of conservative groups.

Ben Shapiro

#76. Several authoritarian regimes reportedly propose to ban anonymity from the web, making it easier to find and arrest dissidents. At Google, we see and feel the dangers of the government-led net crackdown. We operate in about 150 countries around the globe.

Vint Cerf

#77. Once people sense their own power, no authoritarian government can stand against the people who are determined to be free.

Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj

#78. I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.

George W. Bush

#79. Even more than comparing society to a family, comparing it to a body makes an authoritarian ordering of society seem inevitable, immutable.

Susan Sontag

#80. I am deeply concerned that Sri Lanka, despite the opportunity provided by the end of the war to construct a new vibrant, all-embracing state, is showing signs of heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction.

Navi Pillay

#81. These people are often authoritarian and rigid in their views, exerting power over others in an effort to keep others from having power over them. Persecutors may act grandiose and self-righteous to mask their own insecurity.

David Emerald Womeldorff

#82. Universities are some of the few places left where a struggle for the commons, for public life, if not democracy itself, can be made visible through the medium of collective voices and social movements energized by the need for a politics and way of life counter to authoritarian capitalism.

Henry Giroux

#83. All the media of modern consciousness - from the printing press to radio and the movies - were used just as readily by authoritarian reactionaries, and then by modern totalitarians, to reduce liberty and enforce conformity as they ever were by libertarians to expand it.

Adam Gopnik

#84. You find the most outrageous deviants in the countries with the most authoritarian systems.

Amelie Nothomb

#85. Sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology

Wilhelm Reich

#86. One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity.

Salman Rushdie

#87. There is an authoritarian strain in all of Leftism
because the bigger the government, the more it controls other peoples' lives

Dennis Prager

#88. Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power.

Josh Marshall

#89. We have come to discover what we suspect is a new political mindset emerging among a younger generation of political leaders socialized on Internet communications. Their politics are less about right versus left and more about centralized and authoritarian versus distributed and collaborative.

Jeremy Rifkin

#90. The only thing worse than too much government is too little: in failed states, people suffer at least as much violence and injustice as under authoritarian rule, and in addition their trains do not run on time.

Tony Judt

#91. That the more authoritarian organizations survive and prevail goes generally unnoticed because people focus on the objectives of organizations, which are many and varied, rather than on their structures, which lend to be similar.

Robert Shea

#92. Anti-digital mindsets are those "status quo" types of thinking, authoritarian attitude, and bureaucratic decision-making.

Pearl Zhu

#93. Comic book readers tend to be pretty secular and anti-authoritarian; nothing is above satire in their eyes.

G. Willow Wilson

#94. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.

Oscar Wilde

#95. The authoritarian sets up some book, or man, or tradition to establish the truth. The freethinker sets up reason and private judgment to discover the truth ... It takes the highest courage to utter unpopular truths.

Herbert Spencer

#96. I'm a good authoritarian figure; I don't know why. 'Can you be a cop?' Sure. 'Can you be a Marine?' Absolutely. Well, at least in a movie.

Henry Rollins

#97. The desire to be on sure ground is the relict of an authoritarian frame of mind.

Ernst Tugendhat

#98. In Russia an authoritarian leader is running the country. You can't fight Putin with elections because he controls them. That's why demonstrations are the most effective approach. Unfortunately Russia has sunk to this primitive level.

Alexei Navalny

#99. We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.

Lionel Trilling

#100. Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you."
"Sir?"
"It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority."
"Sir?"
"That's practically zen.

Terry Pratchett