Quotes & Sayings About Oppressive Regimes

Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the U.S. in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil. — Noam Chomsky

We know that dismantling old oppressive regimes is a great deal faster and easier than building new flourishing democracies. Chinggis Khaan once said, 'It was easier to conquer the world on horseback than to dismount and govern.' True validation of democracy lies less in what we tear down, and more in what we build. — Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj

Muslims have been subjected to so many tyrants and oppressive regimes. That's what the Arab Spring was about, but the problem comes in trying to direct a revolution. — Cat Stevens

Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft. She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund - doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash. — Donald Trump

The world has paid a heavy price for the lack of democracy in most of the Middle East. Operation Ajax [CIA code for the August 1953 coup] taught tyrants and aspiring tyrants there that the world's most powerful governments were willing to tolerate limitless oppression as long as oppressive regimes were friendly to the West and to Western oil companies. That helped tilt the political balance in a vast region away from freedom and toward dictatorship. — Stephen Kinzer

This was the end of the Renaissance. Culture, once beloved and fostered by the papacy, opened the way to dangerous freedom. Then - as now - knowledge, culture, intellectual curiosity became suspect, even dangerous to oppressive regimes: knowledge leading to engaging the mind into reasoning, culture into wanting to know more, intellectual curiosity sharpening the appetite for information, fact. Ignorance was considered safe and political oppression went hand in hand with the congregation of the Inquisition. — Gaia Servadio

There is no one, and surely no entire people, in whom the image of God has been utterly extinguished. Faith in God means believing that anyone can be transformed, regardless of the past. To write off whole groups of people as intrinsically racist and violent is to accept the very same premise that upholds racist and oppressive regimes. — Walter Wink

What can we put into the hands of people under oppressive regimes to help them? For me, a big part of it is information, knowledge - the ability to defeat propaganda by understanding it. — Jimmy Wales