Quotes About Authoritarianism

The evidence of priming studies suggests that reminding people of their mortality increases the appeal of authoritarian ideas, which may become reassuring in the context of the terror of death. Other

Terrorizing you," he proclaimed, "while you are carrying arms on our land, is a legitimate and morally demanded duty.

Your system (Russia) allows for no viable opposition, and, without a viable opposition, there can be no democracy. - Sarah Crawford

Russia will never be a democracy again, Allon. We cannot live as normal people.

He was xenophobic, intolerant, distrustful of the free press, and had little patience for niceties such as parliamentary democracy or the rule of law.

A politically divided and destabilized America - an America drifting toward white nationalism, authoritarianism, and isolationism - will pose no challenge (...). Page 467.

True freedom is freedom from the illusion of morality, from the belief that there is good and evil. There is only power, Mr. Mason.

Citizens should distrust politicians who distrust freedom.

It is impossible to destroy all alleged enemies of freedom everywhere without also destroying freedom in the United States.

Saudi Arabia is a puritanical state that claims a monopoly of wisdom and virtue.

You're a cruel, cold-gutted, heartless bastard but you've got majesty, no doubt about that.

Well, it's easy to be tough when you have a bunch of lunatics with knives protecting you,

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.

I'm afraid I don't suffer petty bureaucrats gladly. A very bad habit, but one I find hard to break. Nevertheless, you will find, Dr. Kelly, that humiliation and blackmail, when used judiciously, can be marvelously effective.

Miller identifies the 'hidden cruelty' in child-rearing as the repetition of 'poisonous pedagogy' inflicted by the parents of the generation before and as providing the soil in which obedience to authoritarianism and fascism take root

The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don't believe in authoritarianism. Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged.

The erosion of personal freedom and liberty as a result of federal policy and legislation is alarming.

Than Shwe ordered the confiscation of all cell phones and laptops and computers so no reportage could come out of Burma. It seemed clear that a demon, something diabolical, rather than something compassionate and human was in charge of Burma.

Must all of them and their families be physically abolished? Of course not? They must be 'liquidated' or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian masses.

It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.

Stalin's policies pushed the world into the Cold War. Putin has the potential to be equally as dangerous.

I do not know of a Chinese blogger who has gone to jail, but I know several who have had their blogs shut down. I also know some Chinese bloggers who have received threatening phone calls from police warning them to 'be careful.' In some cases, they stopped blogging for a while.

I think the arc of history is long, and it bends toward justice. And I think that's what the 'Star Wars' message is. You know, the dark side is in the human heart. And chaos is very troubling for an individual or for a culture, which can lead you to authoritarian leaders. But the arc of history is on the right side. I believe that.