#totalitarian

The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state. ↗

— Adam Michnik

#human-rights #politics #totalitarianism #freedom

The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country. ↗

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

#conspiracy-theories #democracy #dictatorship #freedom #human-rights

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

We invaded Iraq to change a totalitarian, despotic regime, and we have been successful there. ↗

— Judd Gregg

#change #despotic #invaded #iraq #regime

There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital. ↗

— Jerzy Kosinski

#must #nation #punishment #than #totalitarian

Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom. ↗

— Milos Forman

#certainly #communist #did #easy #freedom

But if we had to trade with a Europe dominated by the present German trade policies, we might have to change our methods to some totalitarian form. This is a prospect that any lover of democracy must view with consternation. ↗

— Wendell Willkie

#change #consternation #democracy #dominated #europe

Disorder is inherent in stability. Civilized man doesn't understand stability. He's confused it with rigidity. Our political and economic and social leaders drool about stability constantly. It's their favorite word, next to 'power.' 'Gotta stabilize the political situation in Southeast Asia, gotta stabilize oil production and consumption, gotta stabilize student opposition to the government' and so forth. Stabilization to them means order, uniformity, control. And that's a half-witted and potentially genocidal misconception. No matter how thoroughly they control a system, disorder invariably leaks into it. Then the managers panic, rush to plug the leak and endeavor to tighten the controls. Therefore, totalitarianism grows in viciousness and scope. And the blind pity is, rigidity isn't the same as stability at all. True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#order #rigidity #stability #totalitarianism #totalitarianism

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state. ↗

— Isabel Paterson

#compulsory #educational #model #state #system