Michael A. Ledeen Quotes

Paradoxically, preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader-a dictator-willing to use those dreaded 'extraordinary measures, which few know how, or are willing, to employ.'

Just wage a total war against these tyrants; I think we will do very well and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.

In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to 'enter into evil.' This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still.

I think the level of casualties is secondary... [A]ll the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war... What we hate is not casualties but losing.

The "Axis of Evil" was - and is - very real, as the tyrants of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea knew full well.

They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

China is a civilization pretending to be a nation.

Powerful dictatorships that make their leaders powerful need to stage wars to get ordinary people to march in lockstep like mindless Nazi robots. That is the road to Greatness.

There is no more dramatic proof of the death of the Left than the passage of its central vision - global democratic revolution - into the hands of those who call themselves conservatives.