Quotes About Totalitarianism

A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.

I propose that the forces of corporate totalitarianism are deliberately destroying this entire world in order to sell their simulated version of it back to us at a profit.

Yes, our country has its shortcomings, but there's no moral equivalency between democracy and totalitarianism…There's no moral equivalency between propaganda and the truth.

Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.

militant Fascism was a natural ally of extortion.

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

Some totalitarians prefer to conceal themselves behind the machinery of the state, but, like the cannibal who lovingly cradles his victim as he digs around for his heart, Stalin liked conversing with his terrorized children. He was an intimate murderer.

In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions. It follows, then, that the true opponent of totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions. A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it.

She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison.

Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements. Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.

But the people who struggle against what we call totalitarian regimes cannot function with queries and doubts. They, too, need certainties and simple truths to make the multitudes understand, to provoke collective tears.

Behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil, and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting syllables in unison. p. 100

Ze wilde hun vertellen dat achter het communisme, achter het fascisme, achter alle bezettingen en invallen een wezenlijker en algemener kwaad schuilde; het beeld van dat kwaad is voor haar een optocht van marcherende mensen geworden die de handen heffen en eenstemmig dezelfde lettergrepen schreeuwen. Maar ze wist dat ze hun niet kon uitleggen. Verlegen bracht ze het gesprek op een ander onderwerp.

behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison.

Commies love concrete.

Only a fool would be patient enough to stay in a totalitarian love affair, and only the insincere will use anarchy to commit the sin of unfaithfulness.

We seem to have entered precariously into a kind of totalitarianism that actually abhors free speech and punishes people for revealing their true selves. In other words: the actor's dream.

contradictory and real with its assigned rule book on how to behave. We seem to have entered precariously into a kind of totalitarianism that actually abhors free speech and punishes people for revealing their true selves. In other words: the actor's dream.

We seem to have entered precariously into a kind of totalitarianism that actually abhors free speech and punishes people for revealing their true selves. In other words: the actor's dream.

Hannah Arendt explained in The Origins of Totalitarianism, decoupling politics from reality has a long history: "Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it.

As Hannah Arendt explained in The Origins of Totalitarianism, decoupling politics from reality has a long history: "Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it.

Not untill all babies are born from glass jars will the combat cease between mother and son. But in a totalitarian future that has removed procreation from woman's hands, there will also be no affect and no art. Men will be machines, without pain but also without pleasure. Imagination has a price, which we are paying every day. There is no escape from the biologic chains that bind us.

There is no question that a society that sets out to control its citizens' use of drugs sets out on the slippery path to totalitarianism.

In The Gulag Archipelago, for example, Alexander Solzhenitsyn remarks that Shakespeare's evildoers, Macbeth notably among them, stop short at a mere dozen corpses because they have no ideology.