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Rudolph Rummel Quotes

d. 2014

Rudolph Joseph Rummel (October 21, 1932 – March 2, 2014) was professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He spent his career studying data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination.

Also known as: R.J. Rummel

Random Rudolph Rummel quote

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The more democratic freedom a people have, the less severe their internal political violence.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

The way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking Power, i.e., through fostering democratic freedom.

Death by Government (1994)

Democratic freedom is a method of nonviolence and an antidote to war.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

Where people are free, political violence is minimal.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

People should not be free only because it is good for them. They should be free because it is their right as human beings.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

The more people are free, the greater their human development and national wealth. In short, freedom is the way to economic and social human security.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

The less democratic a country is, the move intense its foreign violence.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

Well-established democracies do not make war on each other.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

Democracy is a metasolution to the problem of diversity.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

Killing that is explicitly permitted is not democide.

Death by Government (1994)

Democracies don’t murder their citizens.

Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence (1997)

The more libertarian a state, the significantly less internal violence it has, and the significantly and predictably (in variance terms) lower its possible peak violence.

The social structure of a free, democratic society creates the psychological conditions for its greater internal peace.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

Communists, when in control of a nation, have murdered more than 3.6 times the number of people killed in combat in all wars, including the two world wars.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

The less freedom people have the more violence, the more freedom the less violence. I put this here as the Power Principle: power kills, absolute power kills absolutely.

Death by Government (1994)

The more freedom a people have, the more unlikely the government will murder them. Democratically free governments do not murder their own people.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

Democracy says, ‘Govern yourself, but do so in a manner consistent with the same right of others.’ Democracy does not lay down a template for each person’s life, as do dictatorships.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

Quite simply, a free press promotes peace; creating a universally free press would promote universal peace. The bridge between the two is democracy.

Free people never have famine.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

Democide is a government’s murder of people for any reason or no reason at all. Genocide is the murder of people because of their race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or language.

The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Rudolph Rummel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.