Ethiopia did not have the same problem [of corruption]. African leaders looked at us with envy.

We thought that the proletariat would eventually run the world. But it is the Americans who have assumed that position... The American people have changed.

One of the fundamental preconditions of successful socialist construction is to ensure the people's readiness to defend themselves from the ravages of probable regional or global wars on the basis of the balance of forces generating from the basic contradictions of our epoch.

From now on you must pray for your people and yourself three times a day.

Everything Mengistu has done since 1977 has been to place himself in a position of uncontestable power. Neither Haile Selassie nor any of the previous emperors had this insatiable thirst for power.

Mengistu seemed to symbolize the revolution. He was the baria, the slave who overthrew the master, the member of the conquered tribe who got even with the conquerors, the poorly educated son of a servant who rose against the intellectual elite.

I am a revolutionary; my life is dedicated to freeing the people.