In emerging democracies like Russia in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.

The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an argument is exactly what liberty is even though it may never be resolved. In any authoritarian society the possessor of power dictates and if you try and step outside he will come after you.

Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations.

In every country today there is politics. It may be authoritarian politics but there is politics.

There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power.

Leadership must be likeable affable cordial and above all emotional. The fashion of authoritarian leadership is gone. Football is about life. You can't be angry all day.

History proves that all dictatorships all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings mankind has not devised anything superior.

Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens and real diseases are useful material.

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe.