Totalitarian State Quotes - Page 2

• In the West, you don't get in any trouble if you tell the truth, but you still can't do it. Not only can't you tell the truth, you can't think the truth. It's just so deeply embedded, deeply instilled, that without any meaningful coercion it comes out the same way it does in a totalitarian state.

  Noam Chomsky

  Meaningful, Thinking, Doe

  Interview with David Barsamian, progressive.org. May 1, 2004.

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• I think that the next two generations of Americans will be grappling with the very real specter of finding themselves living in a new and bizarre kind of digital totalitarian state - one that looks and feels democratic on the surface, but has a fierce undercurrent of fear and technologically enforced fascism any time you step out of line. I really hope this isn't the case, but it looks really bad right now, doesn't it?

  Chelsea Manning

  Real, Thinking, Two

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Sooner or later a democracy which is to survive has to be able to rely upon that enlargement of vision and purpose of those individuals who compose it, which means that their craving for devotion and self-sacrifice is satisfied in a democratic society on a nobler level, and with a finer recognition of the value of individual personality than is true of a national purpose of a totalitarian state under a dictator.

  Ordway Tead

  Mean, Sacrifice, Self

  Attributed to Ordway Tead in "The Forbes scrapbook of Thoughts on the business of life", p. 138, 1950.

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• Who was I, really? I was the sole occupant of my mother's totalitarian state, my own personal history rewritten to fit the story she was telling that day. There were so many missing pieces. I was starting to find some of them, working my way upriver, collecting a secret cache of broken memories in a shoebox.

  Janet Fitch

  Mother, Memories, Broken

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.246, Hachette UK

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• So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.

  Sylvia Plath

  Children, Thinking, Married

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.45, Hamilton Books

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• Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty, and no freedom of speech or press.

  Dennis Prager

  Running, Organization, Freedom Of Speech

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• It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  War, Details, Loathing

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• Without freedom there will be no firearms among the people; without firearms among the people there will not long be freedom. Certainly there are examples of countries where the people remain relatively free after the people have been disarmed, but there are no examples of a totalitarian state being created or existing where the people have personal arms.

  Neal Knox

  Country, Gun, Long

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• I am against revolution and am proud of it. Democracy cannot be created through revolutions. The most important dichotomy that I make for a society is between those who support democracy and human rights, and those who oppose it. In a totalitarian state, the state views any act of an individual to be political in nature. For example, the clothing that a person wears in a modern state is a private affair whereas in the Islamic Republic all women are forced to wear the hijab (Islamic attire). When women push their headscarf back an inch or two, this is interpreted to be a political act.

  Akbar Ganji

  Islamic, Rights, Views

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• 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

  Fascination, Patterns, Able

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• If one holds these high principles clearly before one's eyes, and compares them with the life and spirit of our times, then it appears glaringly that civilized mankind finds itself at present in grave danger. In the totalitarian states it is the rulers themselves who strive actually to destroy that spirit of humanity. In less threatened parts it is nationalism and intolerance, as well as the oppression of the individuals by economic means, which threaten to choke these most precious traditions.

  Albert Einstein

  Religious, Mean, Eye

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• Puzzlement and doubt are, however, already crimes in the totalitarian state. The mind that is open for questions is open for dissent. In the totalitarian regime the doubting, inquisitive, and imaginative mind has to be suppressed. The totalitarian slave is only allowed to memorize, to salivate when the bell rings.

  Joost Meerloo

  Doubt, Mind, Bells

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• People can live without a giant state. We've proven that already. But a giant state cannot live without dependent people. We feed the beast that puts us in shackles of our own creation. They are dependent on us. We think of revolutions as gunfire in the streets. But a soft and creeping tyranny can be beaten with a soft and creeping revolution. Think about it. Think about all the ways the totalitarian state is dependent on your personal actions. Think about what you do every day to help feed this beast and then stop doing that!

  Bill Whittle

  Thinking, People, Giants

  YouTube Chanel "PJ Media "/ "Afterburner with Bill Whittle: Dependence Day", www.youtube.com. July 3, 2013.

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• Short-sighted and impatient efforts to wipe out poverty by severing the connection between effort and reward can only lead to the growth of a totalitarian state, and destroy the economic progress that this country has so dearly bought.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Country, Effort, Growth

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.97, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• A brilliant analysis of leadership in democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian states, Archie Brown's The Myth of the Strong Leader draws on a remarkably wide range of examples and is distinguished by the relevance of its insights and by the precision and clarity of their exposition. It is an absorbing read that deserves to become a modern classic of political thinking.

  Jack F. Matlock, Jr.

  Strong, Thinking, Leader

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• If small business goes, big business does not have any future except to become the economic arm of a totalitarian state.

  Philip D. Reed

  Doe, Arms, Small Business

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• Corporation: a miniature totalitarian state governed by a hierarchy of unelected officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies.

  Rick Bayan

  Views, Democracy, Speech

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• For all their faults, right-wing authoritarian regimes more easily accept democratic reforms than left-wing totalitarian states.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  War, Wings, Faults

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• The problem of values arises only when men try to fit together their need to be social animals with their need to be free men. There is no problem, and there are no values, until men want to do both. If an anarchist wants only freedom, whatever the cost, he will prefer the jungle of man at war with man. And if a tyrant wants only social order, he will create the totalitarian state.

  Jacob Bronowski

  War, Animal, Men

  Jacob Bronowski (1975). “Science and Human Values”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• [T]he theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under the conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Book, Competition, Liberty

  "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money". Book by John Maynard Keynes, Preface to the German Edition, February, 1936.

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• Doctrine that eliminates or even obscures the function of choice of values and enlistment of desires and emotions in behalf of those chosen weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action. It thus helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.

  John Dewey

  Attitude, Freedom, Responsibility

  "The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939".

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• But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

  John le Carre

  Differences, West, States

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• There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.

  P. D. James

  Country, Two, Decision

  P. D. James (2011). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.104, Faber & Faber

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• Every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later. . . . Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

  Isabel Paterson

  Educational, Octopus, Political

  Isabel Paterson (1993). “God of the Machine”, p.258, Transaction Publishers

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• I want to say, however, one thing our media in America has done which didn't happen in other totalitarian states is it has very effectively stood up to Donald Trump who has obvious fascist tendencies and his - who's a temptation like all authoritarian figures to try to crush the media or make it obey him. As that - the media has, in fact, stood up to him and has refused to bow out or cower.

  Tim Wu

  Crush, Media, America

  Source: www.npr.org

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