Quotes About Authoritarianism

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits

The mitigated individualism of the collectivist system certainly could not maintain itself alongside a partial communism

She was particularly jealous of the eldest, a boy, whose every movement she criticized. She watched him with an obsessiveness that was quite extraordinary to behold, and she was always putting him to work around the house, blaming him for the smallest evidence of disorder and insisting on her right to punish him for what she alone thought of as misdemeanor.

Leaders cling to power in a socialist state like Venezuela by buying votes and manipulating elections.

On my travels around the world, I've met people in countries where democracy doesn't exist and if it does, they are intimidated into voting in a certain way.

We may repeat the awful revolutionary history of the 20th century because of the vulnerability of social movements to demagoguery.

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.

Social justice for parties like the DMK, DK and the PMK is nothing but practising dynasty politics. Their concept of social justice is successor and family rule.

Authoritarians have always been here. But the features of a given moment make that way of thinking more or less appealing. Germany in the 1920s, when people are starving, suddenly makes 'populist' answers and scapegoating different groups as the source of the problem much more appealing.

Not wanting to suffer criticism, the judiciary has used its power of contempt to stifle criticism.

Religiosity is suffocating in Pakistan. It invariably stokes the fire in driving society to religious extremism.

I've never conspired to overthrow the government; all I did was report on the Arab Spring and suggest that something similar might happen in Ethiopia if the authoritarian regime didn't reform.

Kim Jong-un's style is more suggestive of Saddam Hussein or his murderous son, Uday Hussein.

Hitler had a police state of the first order. And those who showed any sign of being weak-kneed faced prison or often summary execution. That prevented a lot of people who knew that the war was not going to turn out well for Germany from giving up.

In the spring and summer of 1989, a serious political disturbance took place in China.

Nothing for the Left, nothing the government does is ever about its superficial reason; it's only and always about expanding government power and control over you.

We've been conditioned to associate governing with self-promoting arrogance, corruption, inequality, and inefficiency. But

Do you ever read any of the books you burn? He laughed. That's against the law! Oh. Of course.

If there were no war, if there was peace in the world, I'd say fine, have fun! But, Montag, you mustn't go back to being just a fireman. All isn't well with the world.

No, you mustn't! If there were no war, if there was peace in the world, I'd say fine, have fun! But, Montag, you mustn't go back to being just a fireman. All isn't well with the world.

He had written a short story once called "The Pedestrian," about a man who is incarcerated by the police after he is stopped simply for walking.

O]nly a few perceived the intellectual holocaust and the revolution by burial that Stalin achieved.

It was unreal as everything else--as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their government, as their show of work.

time with scornful disregard, as if it were a rather vulgar convention submitted to by the mass of inferior mankind.