Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Dictatorship   /dɪktˈeɪtərʃˌɪp/   Listen
Dictatorship

noun
1.
A form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.).  Synonyms: absolutism, authoritarianism, Caesarism, despotism, monocracy, one-man rule, shogunate, Stalinism, totalitarianism, tyranny.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Dictatorship" Quotes from Famous Books



... no dealings with Robespierre or with any of the men who then sat in the French revolutionary tribunals. How strongly he abhorred their manner of revolution is proved not only from expressions he let drop during his own dictatorship, but still more by his mode of proceeding when he himself was responsible for a new government of state. He was a democrat always; but in the ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... by the active demonstrations of the emigrants, by the outbreak of foreign wars. These were the events about to take place; they would in the end evolve from the chaos of mob rule first the irregular and temporary dictatorship of the Convention, then the tyranny of the Directory; at the same time they would infuse a fervor of patriotism, into the whole mass of the French nation, stunned, helpless, and leaderless, but loyal, brave, and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... for a few years; then a Republic, "democratic and social," as long as it can keep on its legs. After that a second Republic, for a twelvemonth at least. Then an old BOURBON, if one can be found. After this, a military dictatorship; the army to decide its duration. At each change the people will decide by plebiscit whether they want the respective governments to be: ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various

... motley crowds; but they were faint, and chiefly by ragged gamins. A small body repaired to Trochu and offered him the sceptre, which he politely declined. A more important and respectable body—for it comprised the majority of the Corps Legislatif—urged Palikao to accept the temporary dictatorship, which the War Minister declined with equal politeness. In both these overtures it was clear that the impulse of the proposers was towards any form of government rather than republican. The sergens de ville were sufficient that day to put down riot. They did make a ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... thence th'imperiall eagle rooting tooke, Till th'heaven it selfe, opposing gainst her might, Her power to Peters successor betooke, Who, shepheardlike, (as Fates the same foreseeing,) Doth shew that all things turne to their first being. [XVIII. 8.—Sixe months, &c. The term of the dictatorship at Rome.] ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... still sat on his throne [Page 97] in the central state; but he complained that his only function was to offer sacrifices. The Chinese dictatorship was not hereditary, or the world might have witnessed an exact parallel to the duplicate sovereignty in Japan, where one held the power and the other retained the title for ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... any British subject whom he might believe to have been concerned in introducing opium into China. I do not deny that, under the Act of Parliament, the Government might have invested him with this dictatorship. But I do say that the Government ought not lightly to invest any man with such a dictatorship, and, that if, in consequence of directions sent out by the Government, numerous subjects of Her Majesty had ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... independence from Spain in 1816, Argentina experienced periods of internal political conflict between conservatives and liberals and between civilian and military factions. After World War II, a long period of Peronist dictatorship was followed by a military junta that took power in 1976. Democracy returned in 1983, and four free elections since then have underscored Argentina's progress ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... him the idol of the armed millions that alone can accomplish our subjugation. In the South, butchery and rapine by hordes of desperate negroes—in the North anarchy and political intrigue, to be merged into dictatorship and the absolutism of military power. Such would be the results of ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... had done his best. The hereditary dictatorship of a united world had spoken. No democratic minority had ever raised its head here. The society of Mureess was stratified in a way ancient India never thought of being, down to refuse collectors of a thousand ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier

... polished, suave, he early displayed those qualities which afterward made him the master mind of presidential Cabinets and the maker of American Presidents. Physically handsome, loved by most men and all women, he soon acquired a social standing that amounted almost to a dictatorship. His early political activities had greatly benefited New York. He became a member of that group which, under the leadership of Joseph H. Choate and Samuel J. Tilden, accomplished the downfall of William M. Tweed. Whitney remained ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... influence of the Gould Concession. What was currently whispered was this—that the San Tome Administration had, in part, at least, financed the last revolution, which had brought into a five-year dictatorship Don Vincente Ribiera, a man of culture and of unblemished character, invested with a mandate of reform by the best elements of the State. Serious, well-informed men seemed to believe the fact, to hope for better things, for the establishment of legality, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... to establish a Dictatorship as soon as I arrived in the Philippines, and he assured me that he would use his best endeavours to have the arms already contracted for delivered to me in the Philippines, which he in fact did. [It is to be observed, though, that ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy

... is that of the common and statutes laws respecting the rights to real property. It may tend to create litigation, as to claims which are now refused entirely, but if no litigation or less is the grand desideratum, why not establish a dictatorship at once? The ipse dixit of one man will then prevent all argument. But the rights of property and jury trial in all cases are ours by the constitution—and equally are we entitled by the constitution to the pursuit of happiness and wealth in aerial regions as on the common earth—and if we ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... a woman, have dared to speak publicly against the dictatorship of the Church, the Church, with its usual force and honor, answers argument with personal abuse. One reply it gives. It is this. If a woman did not find comfort and happiness in the Church, she would not cling to it. If it were not good for her, she in her purity and ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... interest. These theoretical monarchists, but practical republicans, were for the most part more able, more patriotic, and higher-minded men than the convinced republicans; and in all probability a third republic, started without their cooeperation, would also have ended in a dictatorship. Any substantial advance toward social reorganization will in the same way be forced by considerations of public welfare on a majority of theoretical anti-socialists, because it is among this class that the most competent ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... first, as the official colleague of those consuls, one of whom had nominated him, he might not remain in office beyond their legal term; and secondly, a period of six months was fixed as the absolute maximum for the duration of his office. It was a further arrangement peculiar to the dictatorship, that the "master of the army" was bound to nominate for himself immediately a "master of horse" (-magister equitum-), who acted along with him as a dependent assistant somewhat as did the quaestor along with the consul, and with him retired from office—an arrangement undoubtedly connected with ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... federation in name only. Even after several generations, the refugees had not been able to build up enough population to fight the Empire. There was only one other way out, as they saw it. They formed a military dictatorship. ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett

... (Constitutional Democrats) were responsible only to their party. To meet the bourgeoisie's wishes, the General Executive Committee, after the July days, released the Socialist Ministers from all responsibility to the Soviets, in order, as it were, to create a revolutionary dictatorship. It is rather well to mention this, too, now that the same persons who built up the dictatorship of a coterie, come forth with accusations and imprecations against the dictatorship of a class. The Moscow Conference, at which the skilfully manipulated professional ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... desperate is the situation of the South that our only hope lies in our great Commander. The Confederate Congress has sent me to offer him the Dictatorship—" ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... all the financial interests in the United States which had Mexican holdings, and a consolidated European opposition as well. Every dollar of foreign money invested in Mexico was confident that what Mexico needed most was such a dictatorship as that of Huerta or American intervention. Mr. Wilson's problem was to get rid of Huerta without involving the United States in war, and then by steady pressure bring about the establishment of a responsible government that rested on something at least resembling the consent ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... appeared in great numbers, Bolingbroke, then Secretary of State, at their head. When Cato lamented the extinguished freedom of his country the Whigs were vociferous in their cheers, and glared fiercely at the Tories; but when the austere Roman was made to denounce Caesar and a perpetual dictatorship, the Tories professed to regard this as a denunciation of Marlborough, and his demand to be made commander-in-chief for life, and they gave back the cheering with redoubled vehemence. At last Bolingbroke's own genius ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... in cases of extreme exigency, the assumption of absolute power in the form of a temporary dictatorship. Free nations have, in times of old, conferred such power by their own choice, as a necessary medicine for diseases of the body politic which could not be got rid of by less violent means. But its acceptance, even for a time strictly limited, can only be excused, if, like Solon or Pittacus, the ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... respectively, Rome's shield and sword. They were both old men, though Marcellus may have been looked upon as young in comparison with Fabius, who was upward of seventy, and who, eight years after his memorable pro-dictatorship, retook Tarentum and baffled Hannibal. The old Lingerer was, at eighty, too clever, slow as they thought him at Rome, to be "taken in" by Hannibal, who had prepared a nice trap for him, into which he would not walk. Marcellus was about fifty-two when he was pitted against the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... admired Lyttelton. His politics (at one juncture) were 'The Dictatorship for Lord Chatham'! How does this agree with the sentiments of Junius? In 1767-69 Junius had exhausted on Chatham his considerable treasury of insult. He is 'a lunatic brandishing a crutch,' 'so black a villain,' 'an abandoned profligate,' and he exhibits ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... dynasties of inordinately rich families ruling the United States industrially and politically. Singly it has mastery over many of the railroad and public utility systems and industrial corporations of the United States. In combination with other powerful men or families of wealth, it shares the dictatorship of many more corporations. Under the Vanderbilts' direct domination are 21,000 miles of railroad lines, the ownership of which is embodied in $600,000,000 in stocks and $700,000,000 in bonds. One member alone, William K. Vanderbilt, is a director of seventy-three transportation and industrial ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... It is true that the scheme provided for the eventual formation of a republic, but it is doubtful if the people who drew it up really knew what that word meant. What was provided for in practice was a strong and highly centralized military dictatorship, in which, under the form of election, provision was made for the filling of all offices by men devoted to the group which had ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... tribune of the plebs, proposed the allotment of lands recently taken from the Cimbri in Gaul. This law was passed, but eventually declared null by the senate, with the rest of Saturninus's laws. A more dangerous precedent was set by Sulla in his dictatorship (82-81 B.C..) He was the first to confiscate the lands of his political foes, and of communities which had resisted him, and treating them as ager publicus, assign them to his veterans as a prize. This example ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... His great works, his gallant actions, his speeches, and his proclamations ever since he had risen to eminence left no doubt of his wish to secure happiness and freedom to France, his adopted country. At that critical moment the necessity of a temporary dictatorship, which sometimes secures the safety of a state, banished all reflections on the consequences of such a power, and nobody seemed to think glory incompatible with personal liberty. All eyes were therefore directed on ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... corruption. And more particularly they accused the dictator himself. And so telling was the effect of these charges, that Menenius, after haranguing the people and complaining to them of the calumnies circulated against him, laid down his dictatorship, and submitted himself to whatever judgment might be passed upon him. When his cause came to be tried he was acquitted; but at the hearing it was much debated, whether he who would retain power or he who would acquire it, is the more dangerous citizen; the desires of both ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... himself unable to stem the current of the multitude, which ran strong and violent, he betook himself, for the present, to his house, and afterwards, for some days together, professing sickness, finally laid down his dictatorship. The senate created another dictator; who, choosing Stolo, leader of the sedition, to be his general of horse, suffered that law to be enacted and ratified, which was most grievous to the patricians, namely that no person whatsoever should possess above five hundred acres of ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... future lay dark before him; and not the most sagacious politician at Rome could have divined the series of events—blundering weakness on the one side and unscrupulous ambition on the other—which led to the Dictatorship of Caesar and the overthrow of the constitution." Nothing can be more true. Cicero was probably the most sagacious politician in Rome; and he, though he did understand much of the weakness—and, it should be added, of the greed—of his own party, did not foresee the point which Caesar ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... not require us to take part in a work based—in our eyes—upon robbery; and this threat, backed by our withdrawal, finally had its effect. The national assembly made another attempt to evade the task of passing a measure which it disliked: it offered Radoslajev the dictatorship during the period of transition. After he had refused this offer, the assembly gave in and reluctantly proceeded with the consideration of the compensation law. Radoslajev drafted a bill according to which ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... all that section of Virginia, the people naturally turned to Mosby as their only representative of law and order. It was not unusual for them to submit their property controversies to him for decision. In this way he acquired a civil jurisdiction in connection with his military dictatorship. Being a lawyer by profession, educated at the University of Virginia, his civil administration became as remarkable for its prudence and justice as his military leadership was for magnanimity and dash. I heard an old citizen remark, "For two years Mosby was our ruler, and ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... which forced Congress to create the extraordinary office of dictatorship have disappeared," he said, "and the Republic is now able to constitute and organize itself as ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... authority] judicature &c. 965; cabinet &c. (council) 696; seat of government, seat of authority; headquarters. [Acquisition of authority] accession; installation &c. 755; politics &c. 737a. reign, regime, dynasty; directorship, dictatorship; protectorate, protectorship; caliphate, pashalic[obs3], electorate; presidency, presidentship[obs3]; administration; proconsul, consulship; prefecture; seneschalship; magistrature[obs3], magistracy. monarchy; kinghood[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the meeting, therefore he took no part in the early discussion, further than to ask for the fullest expression of opinion. After hearing the plan for a limited dictatorship proposed, he arose, and, in a voice vibrant with emotion, addressed the meeting ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... Convention are violent and acrimonious. Robespierre has been accused of aspiring to the Dictatorship, and his defence was by no means calculated to exonerate him from the charge. All the chiefs reproach each other with being the authors of the late massacres, and each succeeds better in fixing the imputation on his neighbour, than in removing it from himself. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... could not be executed! But then my mind was at rest. I said, 'Let these men die,' and no Nemesis has required their blood at my hands. What profit these considerations? The Republic is nothing but a name, without substance or reality. It is doomed to fall. Sulla was a fool to abdicate the dictatorship. Why did he not establish a despotism, and save us all this turmoil of politics? But Lentulus Crus, Pompeius, Cato, Scipio—they are men with as much ambition, as much love of life, as myself. The Republic will fall into their hands. Why will it be worse off than in mine? Why ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... deny that the institutions he founded, the laws that he made, and his mode of government wherever established, were beneficent, and entirely aimed at the adjustment of inequalities that had culminated in a great national uprising. His dictatorship was wielded with a wholesome discipline without unnecessarily using the lash. He had no cut-and-dried maxim of dealing with unruly people, but his awful power made them feel that he distinguished between eternal justice ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... which seeks not the support of anarchical majorities,—as it does nowadays when it is no more than a well-trained dog in the hands of second-rate men, and bends all to its will by service rendered: the victorious general, the dictatorship of Public Safety, the supremacy of the intelligence... what you will. It does not depend on us. You must have the opportunity and the men capable of seizing it: you must have happiness and genius. Let us wait and hope! The forces are there: ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... remarkable man, an amazing man—a man who could talk to you, and control your thoughts in a single interview. There has never been a man with such personal magnetism and power, Roger, in all the history of Earth. A man who raised himself from nothing into absolute Dictatorship, and has handled the world according ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse

... it may, he agreed with the King that it was impossible to carry on the work of government with a fractious Cortes in session, and that the only way to keep things going was to try the experiment of a dictatorship. Dom Carlos, in his genial fashion, overcame by help of an anecdote any doubt his minister may have felt. "When the affairs of Frederick the Great were at a low ebb," said the King, "he one day, on the eve of a decisive battle, caught a grenadier in the act of making off from the camp. 'What ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... for one's country. She was a decided favorite in the College, being athletic as well as clever, and of a very jolly merry temperament with a vein of great earnestness. Though the girls sometimes called her "Jumbo," they meant the nickname in token of friendship, and submitted to her dictatorship far more readily than they would have done to that of any other member of the Sixth who had been put in her place. Miss Burd had great confidence in Lispeth, and consequently, when they had talked over the matter of the new society which she wished to be formed ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... Political storms are always cyclones. The gale from the east to-day is a gale from the west to-morrow. Who and what were the Gracchi, then?—the sweet voices began to ask—ambitious intriguers, aiming at dictatorship, or perhaps the crown. The aristocracy were right, after all; a few things had gone wrong, but these had been amended. The Scipios and Metelli had conquered the world: the Scipios and Metelli were alone fit to govern it. Thus, when the election time came round, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... the struggle with Xerxes which developed all the latent energies of the Greeks, which intensified their national existence, and which secured for Athens, as the central power on which the scattered forces of the race converged, the intellectual dictatorship of Hellas. It was a struggle of spiritual energy against brute force, of liberty against oppression, of intellectual freedom against superstitious ignorance, of civilization against barbarism; and Athens, who had fought and won this battle of the Spirit—by spirit ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... or grant of Caesar's should be published after the Ides of March were expired. I pass over many other things, all excellent—for I am hastening to come to a very extraordinary act of virtue of Marcus Antonius. He utterly abolished from the constitution of the republic the Dictatorship, which had by this time attained to the authority of regal power. And that measure was not even offered to us for discussion. He brought with him a decree of the senate, ready drawn up, ordering what he chose to have done: and when it had been read, we all submitted to his authority ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... expectations alike of friend or foe; shrinking no more from the responsibilities of unavoidable failure, than from any other personal dangers. If such a chief could once fairly grasp the staff of command, a virtual dictatorship might work great things for the North. But whence is he likely to emerge? Hardly from the midst of this vast political and military turmoil, where every man is struggling and straining to clutch at the veriest ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... mean one of two things, either that the first member of the Cabinet was a Secessionist and meant to allow the South to go unmolested, or he planned to change our form of Government by a coup d'etat in the crisis and assume the Dictatorship. In either event his attitude boded ill for the new President and ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... dictatorship which Young prescribed and carried out in all matters, spiritual and commercial, might be questioned if we were not able to follow the various steps taken in establishing his authority, and to illustrate its scope, by the testimony, not of men who suffered ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... conventional long form: Democratic Republic of the Congo conventional short form: none local short form: none former: Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Congo/Leopoldville, Congo/Kinshasa, Zaire local long form: Government type: dictatorship; presumably undergoing a transition ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... for such an act were passed. He had squandered the physical and moral resources bequeathed by the Revolution. Its armies were mouldering under the soil of Spain, Russia, Germany, and Belgium; and a decade of reckless ambition had worn to tatters Rousseau's serviceable theory of a military dictatorship. Exhausted France was turning away from him to the prime ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... that the rebels aren't trying to overthrow the nation at all, but simply to restore constitutional and libertarian government. It's common knowledge that they have help and some subsidies from outside, but it's contended that these are merely countries tired of a world dominated by an American dictatorship and, being small Latin-American and European states, couldn't possibly think of conquering us. Surely you've ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson

... dictatorship to extend his own military command and to curtail Caesar's. The position resolved itself into a rivalry between the two; Caesar declaring as always for the democracy, Pompeius now assuming the championship of the aristocracy, and the guardianship of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... may argue the matter—that is his privilege, just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the attraction of gravitation—but it won't do any good, he must OBEY. I wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was one about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, through ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... He may sometimes assassinate, but he never withstands, his master. In the South there are no families so poor as not to have slaves. The citizen of the Southern States of the Union is invested with a sort of domestic dictatorship, from his earliest years; the first notion he acquires in life is that he is born to command, and the first habit which he contracts is that of being obeyed without resistance. His education tends, then, to give him the character of a supercilious and a hasty man; irascible, violent, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... by their sympathy with Medlicot! He had chosen to manage every thing himself without contradiction and almost without counsel; but, like other such imperious masters, he now found that when trouble came the privilege of dictatorship brought with it an ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... instance of the manner in which things were done when a Dictatorship prevailed in the country, and that was what the Dictator did. Upon the whole, I do not think that, in general, out of common history books, you will ever get into the real history of this country, or anything particular which it would beseem you to know. You may read very ingenious and very ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... the "Scarlet Mother of the Tiber," assumed the government and dictatorship of the world. Imperial, dogmatic, relentless, the arbiter of the fate of humanity on ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... was that the Church and the State were the great institutions whereby brute man had acquired his small share of justice and {7} reason, and that to hack at the root of both State and Church was fatal; it could only lead to the dictatorship of the soldier or to that of the mob. Of these two evils the former appeared to him the less, while the latter he could only think of in terms of folly and outrage. Taine's conservatism was the reaction ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... sound about the then novel phrase, "Direct Action," and it gave a sense of useful business to that otherwise over-portly word, "Proletariat." And the local politicians, promised good jobs in LENIN'S millennium, made great use of the phrase, "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Thus many an honest workman joined in under the belief that it meant an extra hour's holiday on Saturdays, an extra hour in bed on Mondays and an extra ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various

... more pregnant of great results, was to be fought out in Spain. Julius Caesar's conspiracy against the Roman Republic, and his desperate fight with Pompey for the dictatorship, long drenched Spanish soil with blood, and had its final culmination (after Pompey's tragic death in Egypt) in Caesar's victory over Pompey's sons at Munda, in ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele

... into a Dead March; few notes and slow, with rests. The army moved and halted, moved and halted with a weird stateliness. Couriers came back from the man riding ahead, cadet cap drawn over eyes that saw only what a giant and iron race might do under a giant and iron dictatorship. General Jackson says, "Press Forward!" General Jackson says, "Press ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... not discovered any of the magnetic force of the hero—isn't magnetic force the word? He is ever so nice and quiet and intellectual, and I dare say, as an all-round man, he's first-class, but I have not yet struck the Dictatorship quality ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... materially enlarged the powers of Washington. They authorised him to raise sixteen additional regiments; furnished him with all the money they could, and promised him a great deal more; and finally conferred upon him, for six months, a sort of dictatorship. They further voted a loan of 8,000,000 of dollars; they made more paper-money; they threatened all who would not receive it in payment for goods or labour; and they adopted all possible means, by force, intimidation, and enticement, to get ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain success can be dictators. What I now ask from you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... the accumulating evidence that the men who manipulate the forces of organized labor are Anarchists at heart, plotting to let loose the torch of red revolution over this fair land. We have clearly showed their nefarious purpose to overthrow the Statue of Liberty and set up in its place the Dictatorship of the Walking Delegate. But, evil as we thought them, we were naive enough to give them credit for an elemental sense of decency. Even though they had no respect for the works of man, we thought at least they would spare the ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... break with the Irish Leader, and Parnellism without Parnell became obviously impossible, the English realised that the working of representative institutions in Ireland had produced not a democracy but a dictatorship, and they began to attach a lesser significance to the verdict of the Irish polls. Their faith in democracy was unimpaired, but, in their opinion, the Irish had not yet risen to its dignity. So most English Radicals came round to a view which they had always reprobated ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... them! Oh for a legal, constitutional, statute Cromwell, ready to behead treason, rebellion, slavocracy and slavo-sympathy, as the great Oliver beheaded and crushed the poisonous weeds of his time. If the democratic-copperhead vermin had the possibility, they would make a McClellan-Seymour dictatorship, and extinguish for a century at least, light, right, justice, and freedom. Not ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... raised her head, and with the mildness of assured dictatorship, pronounced: 'Never say that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... be beaten at first by any concentrated power of nearly equal strength. After a time the commander-in-chief emerges from the confused mass of counsellors, and substitutes the action of one mind and will for the conflict of many. The Romans recognized the Dictatorship as the necessary complement of the Republic; and it is worthy of remark that that high office was never abused so long as the people were worthy to be free. "Ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat" was the formula according to which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... property-holders had allowed the Revolution of February to take place, and to sweep away that dynasty in which their principles stood incarnate. The French imperial throne is in an especial manner the result of that alarm. When General Cavaignac had succeeded in conquering the "Reds," a military dictatorship followed his victory as a matter of course, and it remained with him to settle the future of France. The principles of his family led him to sympathize with the "oppressed nationalities" which were then struggling in so many places for freedom; and had he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... words and actions, however, so far outweigh all his good qualities, that it is thought he abused his power, and was justly cut off. For he not only obtained excessive honours, such as the consulship every year, the dictatorship for life, and the censorship, but also the title of emperor [86], (46) and the surname of FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY [87], besides having his statue amongst the kings [88], and a lofty couch in the theatre. He even suffered some honours to be decreed to him, which were ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... the same way that Democracy comprises and surpasses Liberalism, being a more advanced development of the same fundamental concept. Socialism in its turn generates the still more extreme doctrine of Bolshevism which demands the violent suppression of the holders of capital, the dictatorship of the proletariat, as means for a fairer economic organization of society and for the rescue of the laboring ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various

... was accepted. The conference averted war between the United States and Mexico, although failing to solve the questions at issue. Shortly afterward, however, Huerta retired from the field unable to continue his dictatorship, and the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... on his own ability to forecast the inevitable. Without waiting for the results of the Proclamation to appear, but in full confidence that he had driven a wedge between the Jacobins proper and the mere Abolitionists, he threw down the gage of battle on the issue of a constitutional dictatorship. Two days after issuing the Proclamation he virtually proclaimed himself dictator. He did so by means of a proclamation which divested the whole American people of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus. The occasion was the effort ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... have dissolved the Assembly as he did, and appealed to the people. Which is not saying, however, that he is a Washington. We must wait, I think, to judge the man. Only it is right to bear in mind one fact, that, admitting the lawfulness of the coup d'etat, you must not object to the dictatorship. And, admitting the temporary necessity of the dictatorship, it is absolute folly to expect under it the liberty and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... a dictatorship than anything else, and had about it something at once genial and Mephistophelian. The conquest of Rhodesia was nothing in comparison with the power attained by this combine, which arrogated to itself almost ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... their country, and pocketed, with their followers, the proceeds of the sale. Their control of the country rested upon force; the stability of the Diaz rule, for instance, depended upon the "President's" ability to maintain his dictatorship—a precarious guarantee to the titles he had given. Hence the premium on revolutions. There was always the incentive to the upstart political and military buccaneer to overthrow the dictator and gain possession of the spoils, to sell new doubtful concessions and levy new tribute on the capitalists ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... their property and lives entirely at the dictator's disposal. During his term of office, which could not exceed six months, the state was under martial law. Throughout Roman history there were many occasions when a dictatorship was created to ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... celebrating the Latin festival, and holding all the elections, he spent eleven days; and having resigned the dictatorship, set out from the city, and went to Brundisium, where he had ordered twelve legions and all his cavalry to meet him. But he scarcely found as many ships as would be sufficient to transport fifteen thousand legionary soldiers and five hundred horse. ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... costumes for all the special and variety performances we give of the plays: Hamlet in modern dress, Julius Caesar set in a dictatorship of the 1920's, The Taming of the Shrew in caveman furs and leopard skins, where Petruchio comes in riding a dinosaur, The Tempest set on another planet with a spaceship wreck to start it off Karrumph!—which means a half ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... grandchildren's grandchildren when grey old men will still be trying to settle the Irish question, which can never be settled until there arises a big man strong enough to force his will on the Empire and fortunate enough to be able to hand over the reins of political dictatorship to an equally enlightened and ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... time, and Quintus Fulvius Flaccus for the fourth. The praetors were then created; Lucius Veturius Philo, Titus Quintus Crispinus, Caius Hostilius Tubulus, and Caius Aurunculeius. The magistrates for the year being appointed, Quintus Fulvius resigned the dictatorship. At the end of this summer, a Carthaginian fleet of forty ships, under the command of Hamilcar, passed over to Sardinia. At first it laid waste the territory of Olbia, and then Publius Manlius Vulso, with ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... present hour, the democracy of the South is about to degenerate into demagogism and dictatorship. But the North presents quite a different spectacle. Mark what is passing there; pierce beneath appearances, beneath inevitable mistakes, beneath the no less inevitable wavering of a debut so well prepared for by the preceding Administration, and you will find the firm resolution ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... right of the minority, had brought Louis XVI. to acknowledge the National Convention, and saved the people. Things were rendered legitimate by the end towards which they were directed. A dictatorship is sometimes indispensable. Long live tyranny, provided that the ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... common translation of the Scriptures, though it is extremely doubtful whether the chamois or the ibex was to be found in any district of Palestine. Dr. Shaw holds the opinion that the zomer must have been the giraffe; for though it was a rare animal, and not known in Europe before the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, it might, he thinks, have been common enough in Egypt, as it was a native of Ethiopia, the adjoining country. It may therefore be presumed, says he, that the Israelites, during their ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... stood as if lost in the contemplation of the glory of that day, when, in the triumph of his leadership, the people of the nation he so despised and hated would rise in bloody revolution against their own government and accept in its stead the dictatorship of lawless aliens who profess allegiance to no one but ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... themselves; the King becoming, when he put on the ordinary dress of an Englishman, Mr. James Spence, while Cromwell, after a similar transformation, became Mr. Sidney Ormond; and thus, with nothing of Royalty or Dictatorship about them, the two strolled up the narrow street into the main thoroughfare and entered their favourite midnight restaurant, where, over a belated meal, they continued the discussion of the African project, which Spence persisted in looking upon as one of the maddest ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... was seen at first to strengthen the ties by which he had already been united to Marat and Danton, and to avail himself particularly of the latter, in order to overthrow the Girondins, who, from the fifth session, had suspected his ambition, and accused him of aspiring to the dictatorship. It was during this struggle that Louvet pronounced against him that very eloquent harangue, which Madame Roland called the "Robespierreiad." Assisted by his brother and by Danton, Robespierre, in the sitting of November 5th, overpowered the Girondins, and went to the Jacobins to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... rebellion in Spain, the open revolt of some and the distrust of others in Germany, the rapid advance of the Turks towards the west, and, above all, the struggle with France. Despite his many quarrels with the Holy See, and in face of the many temptations held out to him to arrive at the worldwide dictatorship to which he was suspected of aspiring, by putting himself at the head of the new religious movement, he never wavered for a moment in his allegiance to the Catholic ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... condition of Rome, from the renewed assaults of the Acquians and Volscians, led to the appointment of another very remarkable man to the dictatorship—L. Quintius Cincinnatus, a patrician, who maintained the virtues of better days. He cultivated a little farm of four jugera with his own hands, and lived with great simplicity. He summoned every ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... been written before Caesar's death, we should have had plain allusions (as in the prooemia of the Academica, the De Finibus, the Tusculan Disputations, and the De Natura Deorum) to Caesar's dictatorship.[12] ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... waiters on Providence, and, except that they have some vague idea that the Army of the Loire will perform impossibilities, they are contented to live on from day to day, and to hope that something will happen to avert the inevitable catastrophe. I can understand a military dictatorship in a besieged capital, and I can understand a small elected council acting with revolutionary energy; but what I cannot understand is a military governor who fears to enforce military discipline, and a dozen respectable lawyers and orators, whose sole idea of Government is, as Blanqui ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... aggregation like the human race there will be the warped souls who feel superior to the rest of humanity. They welcome dictatorships providing they can be among the dictators and if they are not included, they fight until the other dictatorship is deposed so that they ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... was, to look from her window only meant to find repeated the trivialities of life, more picturesque indeed, but still trivialities. It was the estimable and domestic qualities of Nature that presented themselves: Nature in her most maternal and uninspired mood—Mother earth submissive to the dictatorship of man, permitting herself to be torn, and wounded, and furrowed, and harrowed at his pleasure, yielding her substance and her life to sustain the produce of his choosing, her body and her soul abandoned supine to his caprice. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... first few days in January, building on the rumour that the last note from England had promised help in the event of the Eider being passed, people began to hope that the war might be avoided, and pinned their faith to Monrad's dictatorship. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... court, had been supplanted in the queen's favour; Godolphin and the Whig party had been swept from power; and a Tory ministry bent upon peace had taken their place. Marlborough knew that his period of dictatorship was at an end, and he would have resigned his command but for the pressing instances of Eugene, Heinsius and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... find a soul which was born to a full sense of individual liberty, an unchallenged right of self-determination on every new alleged truth offered to its intelligence, voluntarily surrendering any portion of its liberty to a spiritual dictatorship which always proves to rest, in the last analysis, on a majority vote, nothing more nor less, commonly an old one, passed in those barbarous times when men cursed and murdered each other for differences of opinion, and of course were not in ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... what I'd do, Prince Trevannion?" Shatrak said. "I'd just heave this Mastership thing out, and set up a nice tight military dictatorship. We have the planet under martial rule now; let's just keep it that way for about five years, till we can train a ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... four lines in a man's handwriting he might be criminally tried." Farther on were scattered denunciations against the Huguenots; the republican plans they had drawn up; the division of France into departments under the annual dictatorship of a chief. The seal of this projected State was affixed to it, representing an angel leaning upon a cross, and holding in his hand a Bible, which he raised to his forehead. By the side was a document which contained a list of those cardinals the pope had selected the same day as the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... first hour of his advent, that was her attitude towards the baby boy. As a piece of her own property, she tolerated him; she assumed it, as a matter of course, that in herself alone should be vested all rights of dictatorship over him. But when, in any way, he interfered with her personal comfort, she handed him over to the safe keeping of his nurse. And the nurse received him with a gratitude unblunted by her forty years' experience of similar babies. She coddled him, and dandled ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... Dictatorship - a form of government in which a ruler or small clique wield absolute power (not restricted by ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... he made to suggestions that the army would follow him in a coup d'e'tat is supported by what he formally declared in his memoirs. He there tells us that in 1861 he was often approached in regard to a "dictatorship," and that when he was finally removed many in the army were in favor of his marching upon Washington to take possession of the government. [Footnote: Own Story, pp. 85, 652.] It would seem that treasonable notions were rife about him to an extent ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... freed from the yoke of Spain Venezuela and New Grenada, which, in 1819, he erected into a republic under the name of Colombia; achieved in 1824 the same for Upper Peru, henceforth called Bolivia, after his name; accused of aspiring to the Dictatorship, he abdicated, and was preparing to leave the country when he died of fever, with the sage reflection on his lips, "The presence of a soldier, however disinterested he may be, is always dangerous in a State that is new to freedom"; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Instead, now we are building bonds with nations that once were our adversaries. Growing connections of commerce and culture give us a chance to lift the fortunes and spirits of people the world over. And for the very first time in all of history, more people on this planet live under democracy than dictatorship. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... was under a dictatorship. In 1898 M. A. Sanclamente was elected President, and J. M. Maroquin Vice-President, of the Republic of Colombia. On July 31, 1900, the Vice-President, Maroquin, executed a "coup d'etat" by seizing the person of the President, Sanclamente, and imprisoning him at a ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... fall—of conducting liberty into snares to rejoice in anarchy—of disarming the country because he secretly wished it to be defeated—then the nation had a right to make him descend from the throne, and to call him to her bar, and to depose him in the name of her own dictatorship, and for her own safety. If the nation had not possessed this right, the right to betray the people with impunity, would, in the new constitution, have been one of the prerogatives of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... from Meiningen[131] the whole community was naturally overjoyed; but their joy did not last very long. A man of high station in Meiningen who was accustomed to exercise a sort of dictatorship in educational matters, as he was the right-hand man of the prince in such things, a man also who had earned an honourable place in literature (of which no one surely would seek to deprive him), feared much lest the elevation of Froebel should injure his own influence. We were therefore, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... were styled "revolutionists" not without sufficient cause. It was currently reported that they had in 1861 conceived the elevation of Fremont to a dictatorship. In 1862, and again in 1863, they invented a scheme for the violent overthrow of the provisional State government and the existing national administration in Missouri. The first act of the program was to seize and imprison Governor Gamble ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... settled political action. In 1886 President Andreas Caceres came into power, and, seeing that the populace of the Republic was now exhausted by the continuous state of conflict, he was permitted to rule unchecked until 1890. Caceres established a species of military dictatorship, and remained the power behind the throne until 1894, when, the acting President having died, he found it necessary to come to the front again, and after some confusion and fighting he was proclaimed President for the ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... its being divided into two compartments by the spina, a low wall surmounted by pillars, obelisks, and other ornamental erections, as well as from its disproportionate length, which rendered it ill adapted to afford a general view to all the spectators, determined Julius Caesar, in his dictatorship, to construct a wooden theatre in the Campus Martius, built especially for hunting, "which was called amphitheatre (apparently the first use of the word) because it was encompassed by circular seats without ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... the Holy Spirit he had believed himself when he knelt through the long Office in the little church; had he been the simple Roman Tribune of the People that he proclaimed himself, when he had seized the dictatorship, history might have followed a different course, and the virtues he imposed upon Rome might have borne fruit throughout all Italy. But with Rienzi, each new phase was the possession of a new spirit of good or evil, and with each successive change, only the man's great ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... Fausta: for the Romans apply the name Faustus to what is fortunate and gladsome. Sulla indeed trusted so far to his good fortune rather than to his acts, that, though he had put many persons to death, and had made so many innovations and changes in the state, he laid down the dictatorship,[294] and allowed the people to have the full control of the consular elections, without going near them, and all the while walking about in the Forum, and exposing himself to any one who might choose to call ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... permanent and enlightened elite is by far the best form of government; infinitely better than the blundering inefficiencies of democratic rule. But throughout history, this elite, whether monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorship or junta, has been unable to perpetuate itself. Leaders die, the followers squabble for power, and chaos is close behind. With immortality, this last flaw would be corrected. There would be no discontinuity of leadership, for the leaders ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley

... Declaration of Rights, and his sanction to the constitutional articles.—Such is the independence of the King and the Assembly.[1435] Thus are the new principles of justice established, the grand outlines of the Constitution, the abstract axioms of political truth under the dictatorship of a crowd which extorts not only blindly, but which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of Korea; abbreviated DPRK Type: Communist state; Stalinist dictatorship Capital: P'yongyang Administrative divisions: 9 provinces (do, singular and plural) and 3 special cities* (jikhalsi, singular and plural); Chagang-do, Hamgyong-namdo, Hamgyong-bukto, Hwanghae-namdo, Hwanghae-bukto, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... absolute superiority of the Germanic race. It was just that it should rule the world, since it only had the power to do so. This "telurian germanization" was to be of immense benefit to mankind. The earth was going to be happy under the dictatorship of a people born for mastery. The German state, "tentacular potency," would eclipse with its glory the most imposing empire of the past and ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of Buenos Ayres, under the dictatorship of General Rosas, the lot of these poor creatures was specially cruel. A war of extermination was carried on against them, and eighty had at one time been shot together in the market-place of the capital. Nothing could be done towards reclaiming ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... his day had married her; and young Caesarion their son was his heir by Egyptian, but not by Roman, law. When, in the days of Caesar's dictatorship, she brought the boy to Rome, Caesar refused to recognise her as his wife, or to do the right thing by Caesarion. To do either would have endangered his position in Rome; where by that time he had another wife, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... proof, The senators, down tumbling with the roof, Would into prais'd, but pitied, ruins fall, Leaving no show where stood the capitol. But thou art just and itchless, and dost please Thy Genius with two strengthening buttresses, Faith and affection, which will never slip To weaken this thy great dictatorship. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick



Words linked to "Dictatorship" :   police state, autocracy, autarchy, dictator



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com