My problem is that I am perhaps too much of a democrat for this time of the country's life. If you need a dictator, then go to the Afghan people. Let them elect a dictator. I am not one of those.
Hamid Karzai
They say that [martial law] would have cost my country less than the bloody anarchy which is there now. I can only reply that it is easy to play the prophet a posteriori and that a sovereign may not save his throne by shedding his compatriots' blood. A dictator can, because he acts, because he acts in the name of an ideology which he believes must triumph whatever the price. But a sovereign is not a dictator. There is an alliance between him and his people which he cannot break. A dictator has nothing to hand over. Power lies in him, and in him alone. A sovereign receives a crown and it is his duty to pass it on.
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
By no stretch of the imagination - as people who knew him closely, personally, or professionally would testify - was Mohammad Reza Shah a dictator in either the historical or contemporary sense of the word. He was not ruthless, mean-spirited, bloody, or tyrannical. A twentieth century man in the street would identify a dictator with Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Idi Amin, Bokassa, Duvalier, Doe, Ceausescu. Mohammad Reza Shah resembled none of them. He may have been an autocrat in the genre of Tito and Franco, but he was not a dictator.
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
I was only an aspiring dictator. I was never a real dictator.
Augusto Pinochet
Some of the defendants say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil.
Baldur von Schirach
Well, I would say that, as long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America — is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition it may be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as something permanent, but as a temporary arrangement.
Friedrich Hayek
Karzai, Hamid
Kasparov, Garry
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