Quotes About Authoritarianism

I draw a very clear distinction between populism and democracy.

I think the over-militarization of local police forces is also true of the over-militarization of the federal government, so I don't really run and hide from the comment that I think there are 48 federal agencies that have SWAT teams.

Comrades, this man has a nice smile, but he's got iron teeth.

I cut my teeth as a journalist writing about societies that didn't have democracy.

Realists value order above freedom: for them the latter becomes important only after the former has been established.

Hazing was against regulations but it was sometimes necessary for the formation of discipline, and by God! Private Reynolds had been in need of some proper Army discipline.

But I had learned a lesson about the overwhelming need of narcissists to be in the right, and to punish those by whom they feel slighted.

No church that panders to the zeitgeist deserves respect, and very shortly it will not get respect, except from those who find it politically useful, and that is less respect than disguised contempt.

Radical egalitarianism necessarily presses us towards collectivism because a powerful state is required to suppress the differences that freedom produces.

Authoritarianism] appeals to core elements of human nature that liberalism does not always satisfy—the desire for order, for strong leadership, and perhaps above all, the yearning for the security of family, tribe, and nation.

But this experience taught me that our civilization cannot survive if we continue to appease the Islamists.

I saw that this desire to control society in the name of equality expresses exactly the contempt for human freedom that I encountered in Eastern Europe. There

If someone asks you why you're oppressing a world and you reply with a lot of poetic crap, no. I guess there can't be a meeting of minds.

but a powerful current of anger was also directed toward the West, which they saw as an enabling force behind the repressive regime.

In degree, however, the total state does differ from its predecessors: it represents statism pressed to its limits, in theory and in practice, devouring the last remnants of the individual.

the "total state." The term, from which the adjective "totalitarian" derives, was coined by Hitler's mentor, Mussolini.

The Nazis took over the essence of each side in the German debate and proudly offered the synthesis as one unified viewpoint. The synthesis is: national socialism.

The motor behind Hitler was not men's immorality or amorality; it was the Germans' obedience to morality—as defined by their nation's leading moral philosopher.

My secretary was interned though she was of Swiss citizenship, and her sister, though a British subject.

I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful - but also very harmful to our society.

To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society.

If you ask me to summarise our mission, I would put it this way: We were a military regime that sought to lay the foundations for freedom and liberty in a complex society.

All that is needed to set us definitely on the road to a Fascist society is war. It will of course be a modified form of Fascism at first.

Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.