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Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.

Gene Sharp

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Gene Sharp
Age: 90 †
Born: 1928
Born: January 21
Died: 2018
Died: January 28
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Professor
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
North Baltimore
Ohio
Sacrifice
Weak
Strength
Dictatorships
Strong
Dictatorship
Never
Dictator
Think
Regimes
Thinking
Empowering
People
Confidence

More quotes by Gene Sharp

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By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority.
Gene Sharp
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It's a nonsense assumption that you can get rid of terrorism with war. Terrorism is taking the lives of innocent people to gain your objective. War is basically the same thing on a larger scale.
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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 be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.
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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 just social, economic,and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression.
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Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.
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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 democratic opponents, and then brazenly violate those same agreements.
Gene Sharp
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You have a chance of learning -- if you want to and youre not arrogant.
Gene Sharp
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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 by the attacked society itself
Gene Sharp
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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 that.
Gene Sharp
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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 CLAIM that the putschists are saving the country from ‪terrorism or ‪#civil war‬, and are preserving ‪law‬ and ‪order‬
Gene Sharp
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Nonviolent struggle is the most powerful means available to those struggling for freedom.
Gene Sharp
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Contrary to popular opinion, even totalitarian dictatorships are dependent on the population and the societies they rule.
Gene Sharp
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That is straight out of Gandhi. If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble. … If you fight with violence, you are fighting with your enemy’s best weapon, and you may be a brave but dead hero.
Gene Sharp