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We’ve all heard many inspiring quotes by famous leaders, politicians, and celebrities.
But how many of us have heard infamous leadership quotes from dictators or autocrats?
This list of 55 infamous, despotic quotes is both shocking and sobering…a cautionary tale from history.
It’s frightening when you realize how passionately each of these dictators believed in their delusion and led many others to commit horrible crimes, all in the name of leadership…if you can call it that!
Let us never forget the human rights atrocities perpetrated by these tyrannical despots.
My book series Why Leadership Sucks, now with two volumes, shares the challenges of aiming to lead as Christ did (the polar opposite of these dictators), as a servant of others first and foremost.
1. Make the lie big. Make it simple. Keep saying it, and eventually people will believe it.
-Adolf Hitler
2. Death is the solution to all problems. No man, no problem.
-Joseph Stalin
3. You cannot run faster than a bullet.
-Ide Amin
4. There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.
-Muammar Gaddafi
5. Politics is when you say you are going to do one thing while intending to do another. Then you do neither what you said, nor what you intended.
-Saddam Hussein
6. Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so, you’re insulting yourself.
-Adolf Hitler
7. North Americans don’t understand that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.
-Fidel Castro
8. The only white man you can trust is a dead white man.
-Robert Mugabe
9. Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?
-Joseph Stalin
10. He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.
-Adolf Hitler
11. I don’t care if they respect me, so long as they fear me.
-Caligula
12. Let us have a dagger between our teeth, a bomb in our hands, and an infinite scorn in our hearts.
-Benito Mussolini
13. I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.
-Adolf Hitler
14. The oppressed peoples can liberate themselves only through struggle. This is a simple and clear truth confirmed by history.
-Kim il Sung
15. I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.
-Pol Pot
16. Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.
-Fidel Castro
17. Generals think war should be waged like the tourneys of the Middle Ages. I have no use for knights; I need revolutionaries.
-Adolf Hitler
18. It’s not for me. I’ve tried human flesh, and it’s too salty for my taste.
-Idi Amin
19. What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.
-Adolf Hitler
20. We have a theoretical concept of the revolution which is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.
-Fidel Castro
21. I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating…because it causes war, hypocrisy, and competition.
-Fidel Castro
22. I’m the object of criticism around the world, but I think that since I am being discussed, I am on the right track.
-Kim Jong Il
23. I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun.
-Fidel Castro
24. I do not see why man should not be just as cruel as nature.
-Adolf Hitler
25. Ideas do not need weapons, to the extent that they can convince the masses.
-Fidel Castro
26. The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword; we shall destroy the latter through starvation.
-Ismail Enver Pasha
27. A revolution is not a trail of roses. A revolution is a fight to the death between the future and the past.
-Fidel Castro
28. They do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races.
-Emperor Hirohito
29. I did not join the resistance movement to kill people, to kill the nation. Look at me now. Am I a savage person? My conscience is clear.
-Pol Pot
30. The man who has no sense of history is like a man who has no ears or eyes.
-Adolf Hitler
31. Condemn me; it does not matter. History will absolve me.
-Fidel Castro
32. It is not truth that matters but victory.
-Adolf Hitler
33. Conquering the world on horseback is easy. It’s dismounting and governing that’s hard.
-Genghis Khan
34. I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I will be one until the last days of my life.
-Fidel Castro
35. Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.
-Che Guevara
36. One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.
-Joseph Stalin
37. They talk about the failure of socialism, but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America?
-Fidel Castro
38. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
39. We love death; the US loves life. That is the difference between us two.
-Osama bin Laden
40. Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.
-Adolf Hitler
41. Homeland or death! Socialism or death! We shall overcome.
-Fidel Castro
42. If you win, you need not have to explain. If you lose, you should not be there to explain!
-Adolf Hitler
43. Politics is war without bloodshed; while war is politics with bloodshed.
-Mao Zedong
43. Politics is war without bloodshed; while war is politics with bloodshed.
-Mao Zedong
44. Americans are the great Satan, the wounded snake.
– Ayatollah Khomeini
45. Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.
-Adolf Hitler
46. I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have 5 million human beings on my conscience is an extraordinary source of satisfaction.
-Adolf Eichmann
47. The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
-Adolf Hitler
48. To read too many books is harmful.
-Mao Zedong
49. A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
-Vladimir Lenin
50. By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.
-Adolf Hitler
51. Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
-Josef Stalin
52. If we knew the meaning to everything that is happening to us, then there would be no meaning.
-Idi Amin
53. Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.
-Adolf Hitler
54. I’m not a dictator; it’s just that I have a grumpy face.
-Augusto Pinochet
55. Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, and assassination. This is the future of war.
-Adolf Hitler
If this list doesn’t scare and sober us into being wary of the corrupting power of leadership if not wielded well, then we may be ready to be led down a bad path by a tyrannical leader.
