Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

Churchill’s metaphor likens dictatorships to a rider perched atop a tiger: the regime’s power is real and dangerous, but it is also unstable. The dictator cannot safely “dismount” (relax repression, permit genuine opposition, or step down) because the forces he has unleashed—violence, fear, militarism, and factional rivals—may turn on him. The closing line, “the tigers are getting hungry,” underscores the escalating demands of such systems: they require ever more enemies, purges, wars, or scapegoats to sustain momentum. The image captures a central paradox of authoritarian rule: apparent control masks dependence on uncontrollable, predatory energies.