Top 137 Coup Quotes & Sayings

For years I looked at the Iranians with envy - not at the outcome of their 1979 revolution, but because it was a popular uprising, not a euphemism for a coup.

A military coup needs a sacrifice and courage that you can't find in an army without morale.

I heard that senior officials in China and the United States were discussing whether to encourage a coup in North Korea to get a more pliable ruler. So I've taken steps to ensure that this can't happen. The man in our government closest to the Chinese, who could have arranged such a coup attempt, was my uncle. The man who would have been my natural replacement was my half brother. Both have been liquidated, as have more than 100 disloyal high-level officials.

NATO cannot accept that the unconstitutional coup in Ukraine has not led to the subjugation of the whole Ukrainian nation.

Electing a black president was probably the only coup America could pull off.

If some people keep saying that the press is still not free in Turkey, then I would like to say this: there has been a coup attempt in Turkey. And there are people siding with the coup plotters. And there are - there is also media outlets that have been against - that are against the coup attempt. So my question is that against the media that supported the coup, will the Turkish justice, judicial system, not take any steps? Of course it will.

The greatest propaganda coup of the American Right has been to convince its citizens that we are in the grip of a liberal conspiracy.

There's been a coup, have you heard? It's the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries. ... And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve. ... And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators ... We need to take out the CIA.

There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.

I don't like this kind of life where every month you are faced with some kind of a coup.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the U.S. government, lead by Mr. Bush, planned and participated in a coup d'etat in Venezuela in April, 2002.

The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you'll think "they'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.

Most governments in the United States in a hundred years have not respected the peoples of Latin America. They have sponsored coup d'etats, assassinations.

It's a coup by the GOP to grab the governorship to California to make this place a safe haven for George W. Bush in 2004. It's incredible when you think about it. The recall cost the state $100 million.

In 2003, I warned of a 'creeping coup' in Russia against the forces of democracy and market capitalism in Russia.

I was deposed by a coup d'etat, by friends that I trusted and aided by the American Government.

Caceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, made possible.

Shouldn't the General Assembly adopt a declaration on the inadmissibility of interference into domestic affairs of sovereign states and nonrecognition of coup d'etats as a method of the change of power?

In two years, there were 22 military coups d'etat, essentially in Africa and the third world. The coup d'etat of Algiers, in 1965, is what opened the path.

This is a coup for commissioner Bud Selig. I'm surprised it's as good as it is.

Respect for sovereignty means to not allow unconstitutional action and coup d'états, the removal of legitimate power.

When I wrote my first serious novel, 'Interior', I was inspired by a 1978 book of Updike's, 'The Coup', which is set in Africa and will come as a delightful surprise to anyone who has only read his Americana.

I believe together, with the OAS, everybody condemned the coup d'etat, and everybody is demanding that President Zelaya should go back to the presidency, and they should call for general elections and realize an election. That's what we want. And I believe that President Obama made the right decisions condemning the coup d'etat.

What happened in Ukraine? The coup d'état in Ukraine has led to a civil war, because, yes, let's say, many Ukrainians no longer trusted President Yanukovych. However, they should have legitimately come to the polls and voted for another head of state instead of staging a coup d'état. And after the coup d'état took place, someone supported it, someone was satisfied with it, while others were not. And those who did not like it were treated from the position of force. And that led to a civil war.

If you think that a coup to overthrow the elected government is a coup everywhere, then you should remember how elections in Ukraine took place in 2004, how elections in Georgia took place in 2003, when the elections results have been torn and thrown away by revolutionary action.

There are leaks from the Embassy in Honduras. There was a coup in 2009. Obama broke with most of Latin America and even Europe and supported the military coup, still does. The ambassador in Honduras sent back a detailed analysis saying the coup was military, illegal, unconstitutional, and that the legitimate president was thrown out. Okay, we now know that Washington was perfectly aware of that and decided to support the military coup anyway. We should have known that at the time. The government has no right to keep that information secret.

Public television goes dark only in two circumstances: when a country is occupied by foreign forces or when there is a coup.

I'm very disappointed by the mature-democracy countries. I was ousted by a coup d'etat.

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.

The story of how Chile, in the decades after its 1973 coup and death of democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende, became one of the most neoliberal societies on the planet is well known.

The opponents of perestroika had suffered a defeat, and then they organized the coup.

Love is now, is always. All that is missing is the coup de grâce- which is called passion.

A coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder.

It is ironic that a nation that has never experienced a coup d'etat should be so obsessed with the idea of conspiracy.

We were extremely prescient in that we predicted the Soviet coup before it happened. That was kind of amazing.

All democracies turn into dictatorships - but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.

I was even accused of teaching the chimps how to fish for termites which I mean that would have been such a brilliant coup.

Gadhafi's vicious regime has left Libya far worse than he found it on the day of his coup in 1969.

The film, even when we were making it in that budget range, which was really a coup - we got it made because we pitched it to the studio head, Joe Roth.

The targeting of General Flynn was a key part of the Obama/Clinton/Deep State coup against President Trump.

It's a coup by the GOP to grab the governorship to California to make this place a safe haven for George W. Bush in 2004. It's incredible when you think about it. The recall cost the state $100 million

The coup de grace which ends the patient's life altogether is quite equivalent to the drastic modification in the institution of marriage that would be brought on by same-gender marriage.

Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart.

I think that the government of [Nicolas] Maduro has argued to stage a coup in Venezuela, that this is obviously a coup against the country's democratic institutions.

My biggest disappointment was, of course, the coup attempts, ... The economy was proceeding very well, but in 1989 we had the most serious coup attempt and ... many of the investors who were set to come here had to tell me that they chose to go to other countries because of the uncertainty brought about by (the coup attempt.) If that had not happened, I'm sure our economy would just be booming today.

I saw the Blair-Mandelson regime as a coup, and I think it was a well-funded coup as well - resources obviously came from big private-sector backers. But all through that period the bulk of the rank and file party were what the party has always been, a socialist party.

If somebody who appears to be a Hizmet sympathizer has been involved in an attempted coup, he betrays my ideals.

Fascism in Uruguay did not begin just with the military coup of 1973, but years before, even when there was still a government with a constitution and parliament.

Brexit was not a coup. Far from it. In the eyes of most analysts, it was a clear sign that people are frustrated and fed up with the status quo; this is particularly the case with independent voters.

What happened in Russia in 1917 wasn't a revolution - it was a coup d'etat.

Without U.S. input, the countries of South America joined forces in 2008 to shut down a coup attempt in Bolivia and prevented a war between Ecuador and Colombia.

In Honduras, in particular, Hillary Clinton as Obama's secretary of state was instrumental in legitimizing the coup's subsequent death-squad regime.

A lot of organizers tell me that while they are making signs or doing whatever they do, they are listening to the Coup.

When I saw that Laverne Cox was on the cover of 'Time' magazine, I totally lost it. It was a coup for the girls!

Brave men are brave from the very first. [Fr., Les hommes valeureux le sont au premier coup.]

Many of us mistakenly believe a coup d'etat is the only kind of coup possible. But a coup doesn't always require tanks on a lawn and senior ranking military types appearing on your TV and radio declaring that democracy as you knew it, is now over.

The Coup does not support the American flag.

I truly do believe that history teaches that weakness arouses evil, and whether it be the horrific attack in France, the inspired attacks here in the United States, the instability in Turkey that led to a coup.

Pinochet took power in a 1973 military coup that the United States supported.

The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.