#totalitarian

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#certain #could #effectively #eloquent #great

It was sometimes feebly argued, as the political and military war against this enemy ran into difficulties, that it was 'a war without end.' I never saw the point of this plaintive objection. The war against superstition and the totalitarian mentality is an endless war. In protean forms, it is fought and refought in every country and every generation. In bin Ladenism we confront again the awful combination of the highly authoritarian personality with the chaotically nihilist and anarchic one. Temporary victories can be registered against this, but not permanent ones. As Bertold Brecht's character says over the corpse of the terrible Arturo Ui, the bitch that bore him is always in heat. But it is in this struggle that we develop the muscles and sinews that enable us to defend civilization, and the moral courage to name it as something worth fighting for. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#authoritarianism #bertold-brecht #islamism #nihilism #osama-bin-laden

The biggest crime in Nabokov's 'Lolita' is imposing your own dream upon someone else's reality. Humbert Humbert is blind. He doesn't see Lolita's reality. He doesn't see that Lolita should leave. He only sees Lolita as an extension of his own obsession. This is what a totalitarian state does. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#blind #crime #does #dream #else

The Cuban people still live in constant fear of a brutal totalitarian regime that has demonstrated time and again its utter disregard for basic human dignity. The fight for a free Cuba has gone on for far too long. ↗

— Mitt Romney

#basic #brutal #constant #constant fear #cuba

Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism. ↗

— Sam Shepard

#away #being #being responsible #care #democracy

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#nature #rule #totalitarian #under

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas. ↗

— Antonio Tabucchi

#doctrines #ideas #perfection #totalitarian

Totalitarianism is not only hell, but all the dream of paradise-- the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith, without secrets from one another. Andre Breton, too, dreamed of this paradise when he talked about the glass house in which he longed to live. If totalitarianism did not exploit these archetypes, which are deep inside us all and rooted deep in all religions, it could never attract so many people, especially during the early phases of its existence. Once the dream of paradise starts to turn into reality, however, here and there people begin to crop up who stand in its way. and so the rulers of paradise must build a little gulag on the side of Eden. In the course of time this gulag grows ever bigger and more perfect, while the adjoining paradise gets even smaller and poorer. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#paradise #totalitarianism #utopia #age

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever. ↗

— George Orwellll

#injustice #totalitarianism #imagination

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#democracy #propaganda #state #totalitarian #totalitarian state