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.
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Page 182Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
» Muhammad Reza Pahlavi - all quotes »
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
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
You Westerners simply don't understand the philosophy behind my power. The Iranians think of their sovereign as a father. What you call 'my celebration' was to them the celebration of Iran's father. The monarchy is the cement of our unity. In celebrating our twenty-five hundreth anniversary, all I was doing was celebrating the anniversary of my country, of which I am the father. Now, if to you, a father is inevitably a dictator, that is your problem, not mine.
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. I mean, you're a — you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.
George W. Bush
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
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Pahlavi, Reza Shah
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