Quotes About Authority

What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use.

all facts that did not agree, or were likely to disagree, with the official fiction—data on crop-yields, criminality, true incidences of "counter-revolutionary" activities as distinguished from the later conspiracy fictions—were treated as non-facts.

The organization of the entire texture of life according to an ideology can be fully carried out only under a totalitarian regime.

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced upon his throne."81

No government exclusively based on the means of violence has ever existed. Even the totalitarian ruler, whose chief instrument of rule is torture, needs a power basis—the secret police and its net of informers.

A valid and comparatively permanent appointment would indeed presuppose the existence of a clique whose members would share the Leader's monopoly of knowledge of what is going on, which the Leader must avoid by all means.

Bureaucracy is always a government of experts, of an "experienced minority" which has to resist as well as it knows how the constant pressure from "the inexperienced majority

For the oath taken by the members of the S.S. differed from the military oath sworn by the soldiers in that it bound them only to Hitler, not to Germany.

Totalitaire overheersing is gericht op de vernietiging van de vrijheid, meer nog, op de eliminatie van de spontaniteit in het algemeen, en geenszins op de beperking, hoe tiranniek ook van de vrijheid. Technisch gesproken blijkt de afwezigheid van enig gezag of hiërarchie in het totalitaire systeem uit het feit dat er tussen de hoogste macht (de Führer) en de onderdanen geen tussenliggende niveaus zijn die elk hun aangepaste deel hebben in het gezag en de gehoorzaamheid.

Wanneer het totalitarisme aan de macht is, gebruikt het de staat als uiterlijke façade om het land in de niet-totalitaire wereld te representeren.[...]Ze moet de schijn van normaliteit en gezond verstand ophouden tegenover de normale buitenwereld.

The Jewish notables (as they were called in the nineteenth century) ruled the Jewish communities, but they did not belong to them socially or even geographically.

both Hitler and Stalin were masters of detail and devoted themselves in the early stages of their careers almost entirely to questions of personnel, so that after a few years hardly any man of importance remained who did not owe his position to them.86

el hecho de que incluso esta autoridad prepolítica que regía las relaciones entre adultos y niños, profesores y alumnos, ya no sea firme significa que todas las metáforas y modelos antiguamente aceptados de las relaciones autoritarias han perdido su carácter admisible.

est, sans conteste, la tonalité absolument dominante

Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

While the people in all great revolutions fight for true representation, the mob always will shout for for the 'strong man', the 'great leader'.

he gains as much power by the system of mutual promises as he loses by his consent to a monopoly of power in the ruler

fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all other tyrannies of the past is that terror is no longer used as a means to exterminate and frighten opponents, but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient.

Only where great masses are superfluous or can be spared without disastrous results of depopulation is totalitarian rule, as distinguished from a totalitarian movement, at all possible.

Sofern Vergangenheit als Tradition überliefert ist, hat sie Autorität; sofern Autorität sich geschichtlich darstellt, wird sie zur Tradition. Walter Benjamin wusste, dass Traditionsbruch und Autoritätsverlust irreperabel waren, und zog daraus den Schluss, neue Wege für den Umgang mit der Vergangenheit zu suchen.

Revolutions always appear to succeed with amazing ease in their initial stages, and the reason is that those who supposedly "make" revolutions do not "seize power" but rather pick it up where it lies in the streets.

Machiavelli knew enough to say the following: "There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.

The task of the totalitarian police is not to discover crimes, but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.

The operation of the secret police, on the contrary, miraculously sees to it that the victim never existed at all.