Quotes About Authoritarianism

When all the exceptions have been made, however, Islamic states and paramilitaries are in a league of their own when it comes to religious censorship.

peaceful civil disobedience can work in oppressive societies that nevertheless allow protesters to protest.

hope I am not making the insulting error of pretending that democracies are as oppressive as dictatorships – such comparisons are the self-pitying and self-dramatising whines of spoilt Western children.

There also needs to be a clean break with totalitarianism: both totalitarian regimes abroad and the totalitarian left – if it is still a left – at home. It is incredible that this point needs to be reiterated after the twentieth century; astonishing that we need to go through all that again.

A resilient people cherishing liberty and equality and the rule of law will endure.

The anarchy that threatens a degrading society is not its punishment, but its remedy.

Our freedom has no other guarantee than the barricades which the anarchic countenance of the world throws up against the imperialism of reason.

Totalitarian society is the common name for the social species whose scientific name is industrial society. The embryo today allows us to foresee the adult animal's deformity.

Totalitarismus" ist die empirische Realität des "Gemeinwillens" (Volonté générale)

The sinister uniformity that threatens us will not be imposed by a doctrine, but by a uniform economic and social conditioning.

The standard-bearers of liberty celebrated by the 19th century ended up as the vanguard of industrial despotism.

Die Fanatiker der Freiheit enden als Theoretiker der Polizei. Die Doktrin Fichtes zum Beispiel gipfelt in einer Theorie des Reisepasses.

They started out calling liberal institutions democratic, and they ended up calling democratic despotisms liberal.

When the Communist Army took over China

Since the Red Guards had removed the goods displayed in the windows of the shops, Mao's official portraits were put there. A person walking down the streets in the shopping district would not only be confused by rows of shops bearing the same name, but also had the uncanny feeling of being watched by a hundred faces of Mao.

There are still some people who think that we have Stalin to thank for all our progress, who quake before Stalin's dirty underdrawers, who stand at attention and salute them.

and that he was astonished that the government paid no attention to it. This gentleman was obviously one of those gentlemen who wish to mix the government into everything, even their daily quarrels with their wives.

In the department of--but it is better not to mention the department. There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service.

Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of 'wrong' ideas

Even my mother said that things were improving. Yet Andrew Steele Jarret was able to scare, divide, and bully people, first into electing him President, then into letting him fix the country for them. He didn't get to do everything he wanted to do. He was capable of much greater fascism. So were his most avid followers.

Yet Andrew Steele Jarret was able to scare, divide, and bully people, first into electing him President, then into letting him fix the country for them. He didn't get to do everything he wanted to do. He was capable of much greater fascism. So were his most avid followers.

My soul, sir? I haven't got one. The management doesn't allow them.

him took place all over the country. And—for better or worse—his conviction that Chinese needed a protracted period of firm, authoritarian political tutelage before democracy could be risked has become the template for reform ever since. As

The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I'd say.