#ria

A Stalin functionary admitted, "Innocent people were arrested: naturally - otherwise no one would be frightened. If people, he said, were arrested only for specific misdemeanours, all the others would feel safe and so become ripe for treason. ↗

— Paul Johnson

#totalitarianism #nature

But I was only a chaotic walker, nobody could stop me; even a totalitarian state was not able to control my daydreams, my poetic fascinations, the pattern of my walking. ↗

— Adam Zagajewski

#resistance #totalitarianism #totalitarianism

Nos instruyen y preparan en la juventud para una profesión, para cumplir los deberes ciudadanos, para el servicio militar, nos enseñaban las reglas del aseo, a comportarnos bien y hasta a comprender lo bello (esto último no tanto). Pero la instrucción, la educación, la experiencia, no nos preparan en absoluto para la gran prueba de nuestra vida: para el arresto por nada y para el sumario sobre nada. ↗

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#totalitarianism #totalitarianism

As persons, so Mournier maintained, we possess both a spiritual and temporal dimension; we exist in history, in relationship with others, but open to transcendence and ultimately to God. This concept of the person, he believed, was denied as much by an atheistic totalitarianism of the Left as by the bourgeois materialism of capitalist society. To the extent that Christianity had become infected by the bourgeois spirit, it had become a prop in what he called, 'the established disorder. ↗

— Robert Ellsberg

#totalitarianism

Not even the most heavily-armed police state can exert brute force to all of its citizens all of the time. Meme management is so much subtler; the rose-tinted refraction of perceived reality, the contagious fear of threatening alternatives. ↗

— Peter Watts

#marketing #memes #perception-of-reality #power #totalitarianism

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized - never knowing. ↗

— Jim Rohn

#could #give #hurt #knowing #materialized

To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible. ↗

— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

#materialism #contentment

I was astonished to see Adrian watching me, a look of contentment on his face. His eyes seemed to study my every feature. Seeing me notice him, he immediately looked away. His usual smirky expression replaced by a dreamy one. “The mechanic will wait,” he said. “Yeah, but I’m supposed to meet Brayden soon, I’ll be-” That’s when I got a good look at Adrian. “What have you done? Look at you! You shouldn’t be out here.” “It’s not that bad.” He was lying, and we both knew it. “Come on, we have to get you out of here before you get worse. What were you thinking?” His expression was astonishingly nonchalant for someone who looked like he would pass out. “It was worth it. You looked…happy ↗

— Richelle Mead

#sydney-sage #the-golden-lily #contentment

People are too complicated to have simple labels. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#people #materialism

My shoes I got to pick. I chose worn-out red flats. I figured I should make it clear from the start that I wasn’t princess material. ↗

— Kiera Cass

#materialism