A Quote by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Quote Topics

Able Been Concepts Democracy Democratic Failed Fall Hear Help Humanity Ideals Ideology Insight Liberal Liberalism Realize Shattering Sounds Style Systems Those Thoughts Today Two Western

Quote Author

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Iranian - Statesman
Born: October 28, 1956

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.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Certainly, if we believe in democracy and democratic systems, when [Benazir Bhutto] failed to pass any legislation, really, at all in her first two years in government during her first term and in fact had a tenure that was marked not only by gross corruption but by human rights abuses, that should have been a time for people to say, "Well, OK, we've given you an opportunity and you haven't bettered the institutions, you haven't strengthened the democratic cause - we may not vote you back."

Fatima Bhutto

And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Virtually all modern forms of extremism accuse liberal Western democratic systems of being hypocritical and, ultimately, weak.

Jonas Gahr Store

Two significant developments in the past several decades have been the collapse of communism as an ideology and the general acceptance, in rhetoric, if not practice, of liberal democracy.

Samuel P. Huntington

The issue of religious liberty is absolutely critical. America was founded on three different types of liberty: political liberty, economic liberty, and religious and civil liberty. It's remarkable that, one-by-one, these strands of liberty are coming under fierce attack from the Left. And that's particularly ironic because "liberal" derives from a word which means "liberty," the free man as opposed to the slave. This liberalism which we're saddled with today isn't a real liberalism at all, but a gangster style of politics masquerading as liberalism.

Dinesh D'Souza

While all democratic systems are works in progress, ours started rather late and therefore has a longer distance to cover. But democratic transformation for us is not mimicking some facets of Western governance. The focus has been on building institutions of democratic governance.

Meles Zenawi

Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.

James Burnham

It should be no surprise that religion in the non-western world has failed to disappear under the juggernaut of industrial capitalism, or that liberal democracy finds its most dedicated saboteurs among the new middle classes.

Pankaj Mishra

What happens when we examine the claims made for Western liberalism as a universalizing ideology of tolerance, human dignity, equality, and compassion is the fact that the patron saint of modern liberalism, John Stuart Mill, thought that barbarian peoples like the Indians were unfit for self-rule.

Pankaj Mishra

To those who cynically say today that liberal democracy would be 'obsolete,' I reply: liberal democracy, human rights, freedom of the press and the rule of law were the right way, are the right way, and will be the right way.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer

Oriental reality is called ideology in Europe and America, and Western ideology is called reality in the Orient. Those viewpoints eat into people's souls and form two distinct kinds of beings.

Rudolf Steiner

Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

Friedrich August von Hayek

The ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy. This is also why society as a whole has no control over technological developments. And this is one of the gravest threats to democracy in the near future. It is, then, imperative to develop a democratic technological culture.

Paul Virilio

With regard to Turkey, I have been to Ankara. Turkey is a democracy. We certainly, we certainly, in the future, ought to encourage our ally to live up to their own democratic institutions and their own democratic ideals.