#totalitarian

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

— Noam Chomsky

#democracy #propaganda #state #totalitarian #totalitarian state

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#totalitarianism

The real point is that totalitarian regimes have claimed jurisdiction over the whole person, and the whole society, and they don't at all believe that we should give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's. ↗

— Jeane Kirkpatrick

#caesar #claimed #give #god #jurisdiction

There is an absolutely fundamental hostility on the part of totalitarian regimes toward religion. ↗

— Jeane Kirkpatrick

#fundamental #hostility #part #regimes #religion

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#authorities #autocracy #dictatorship #envied #freedom

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? ↗

— George Orwell

#perspective #totalitarianism #experience

In einem maßlosen Staat [...] gibt es vielleicht ein wenig mehr Sicherheit, aber ganz sicher sehr viel weniger Freiheit. ↗

— Heribert Prantl

#präventionsstaat #security #totalitarianism #freedom

At a time I used to think that in a world without guards people would walk differently from the way we do in our country. Where people are allowed to think and write differently, I thought, they will also walk differently. ↗

— Herta Müller

#fear #freedom #totalitarianism #freedom

A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set us a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific text-book, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact. ↗

— George Orwell

#totalitarian #truth #life

The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#religion