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It is very significant that there has never been a war between genuine and universal democracies. There have been countless wars between totalitarian and authoritarian states. There have been wars between democracies and dictatorships - most often in defense of democratic values or in response to aggression.

— F. W. de Klerk

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Democracy

More quotes by F. W. de Klerk

We cannot build the future on injustice.

We're not doing what we do because of sanctions. We're doing what we do because we believe it is right.

I have great sympathy with America. It's very, it's very tough to be the only remaining superpower in the world.

Here at the crossroads of our history, we need to turn our backs on the past.

If we dwell on real or imagined sins of the past, we shall never be able to find one another in the present, nor shall we be able to work together on building the future.

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Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution (1917)

The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

Gustave Flaubert

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: F. W. de Klerk (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.