Gene Sharp Quotes

18 quotes in 363 categories

• Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.
• So, he reasoned, if you can identify the sources of a government's power - people working in civil service, police and judges, even the army…
• The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is, it follows, in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to…
• By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority.
• Some foreign states will act against a dictatorship only to gain their own economic, political, or military control over the country.
• Dictatorships usually exist primarily because of the internal power distribution in the home country. The population and society are too weak to cause the dictatorship…
• Whatever promises offered by dictators in any negotiated settlement, no one should ever forget that the dictators may promise anything to secure submission from their…
• Further, democratic negotiators, or foreign negotiation specialists accepted to assist in the negotiations, may in a single stroke provide the dictators with the domestic and…
• There should be no romanticism that international public opinion or even international diplomatic and economic pressure can defeat a coup without determined and strong defense…
• As soon as you choose to fight with violence you're choosing to fight against your opponents best weapons and you have to be smarter than…
• You have a chance of learning -- if you want to and youre not arrogant.
• That is straight out of Gandhi. If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble. … If you fight with…
• Contrary to popular opinion, even totalitarian dictatorships are dependent on the population and the societies they rule.
• There’s one thing that’s been 'learned' maybe from Tunisia and Egypt that I think is a mistake. And that is that the existing ruler has…
• Nonviolent struggle is the most powerful means available to those struggling for freedom.
• The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more…
• Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.
• Violence by the defenders will be used by the putschists to justify overwhelming repression which they want to use anyhow. It will be used to…

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