Dictators aren't stupid, or regimes could be toppled…

Dictators always look good until the last minutes.

— Tomas Garrigue Masaryk

Dictators are actually very fearful themselves. Even when they're asleep, they're afraid that others will take their powers away.

— Chen Guangcheng

Aspiring dictators sometimes win elections, and elected leaders sometimes govern badly and threaten their neighbors.History demonstrates that democracy usually follows good governance, not the…

— Rudy Giuliani

Laughter is something we have against oppression and oppressive people. Dictators hate people who laugh at them. It's easy for them to destroy people…

— Burhan Sonmez

I think that, from Vaclav Havel own experience, he knew if we all paid attention to what was going on, the chances were that…

— Judy Woodruff

The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy…

— Fidel Castro

Dictators can be deterred, they can be crushed - but they can never be appeased.

— Margaret Thatcher

Dictators are ludicrous characters, and, you know, in my career and in my life, I've always enjoyed sort of inhabiting these ludicrous, larger-than-life characters…

— Sacha Baron Cohen

Mobs and dictators were made for each other, and when mobs appear, dictators will soon flourish.

— Jaron Lanier

When dictators and tyrants seek to destroy the freedoms of men, their first target is the legal profession and through it the rule of…

— Leon Jaworski

As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it…

— Alberto Manguel

'The End of America' details the 10 steps that would-be dictators always take in seeking to close an open society; it argued that the…

— Naomi Wolf

Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism.

— Aldous Huxley

America has had to deal with eccentric dictators in the past: Idi Amin, Muammar Qaddafi, Ming the Merciless... but now the security of the…

— Jon Stewart

Tyrants and dictators will accept no other gods before them. They require disobedience to the First Commandment. They seek absolute control and are threatened…

— George W. Bush