Totalitarianism Quotes - Page 4

• I worry that we don't currently have a democracy in the United States. Instead we have what [political philosopher] Sheldon Wolin has recently labeled a sort of inverted totalitarianism.

  Thomas L. Dumm

  Worry, Political, Democracy

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Fighting, Men, Order

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• Globalization is a form of totalitarianism... It is the rich who rule, and the poor live as they can.

  Jose Saramago

  Rich, Poor, Globalization

  Interview with Edney Silvestre, 2007.

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• Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system

  Giorgio Agamben

  War, Mean, Political

  Giorgio Agamben (2008). “State of Exception”, p.2, University of Chicago Press

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• I never loved totalitarianism and all the ideas of making mankind happy always seemed crazy to me.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Crazy, Ideas, Mankind

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• To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.

  Jean Francois Revel

  Democracy, Principles, Definitions

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• The European Union should not be prescribing an identity. We know what that's like, when a government tells its people how it should look; what it should be doing. That's the first step towards totalitarianism.

  Bernard-Henri Levy

  Government, People, Identity

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Believe, Struggle, Challenges

  Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn (2009). “Half the Sky”, p.17, Vintage

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• Totalitarianism extends to whatever touches it...psychological technique, as it operates in the army or in a great industrial plant, entails a direct action on the family. It involves a psychological adaptation of family life to military or industrial methods, supervision of family life, and training family life for military or industrial service. Technique can leave nothing untouched in a civilization. Everything is its concern. Technique, which is destroying all other civilizations, is more than a simple mechanism: it's a whole civilization in itself.

  Jacques Ellul

  Military, Army, Technology

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• I have seen the rise and fall of Nazi tyranny, the subsequent cold war and the nuclear nightmare that for fifty years haunted the dreams of children everywhere. During that time my generation defeated totalitarianism. As a result, your world is poised for better tomorrows. What will you do on your journey?

  Ronald Reagan

  Dream, Children, War

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• The face of totalitarianism turned out to be a mask - obviously - but the face of Capitalism has no face at all.

  Paul Kane

  Politics, Faces, Mask

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• Indeed, we Jews were at the leading edge of communist totalitarianism, one of the most murderous movements of the 20th century.

  Barbara Amiel

  Movement, Communist, Century

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• Peter Beinart excoriates the doughface liberals who during the Cold War put anti-imperialism before anti-totalitarianism and demanded total moral purity on the part of the United States, thus opposing any action in the real world to resist Soviet expansionism. If the Democrats were, as he advocates, to return to the Trumanesque anti-totalitarian liberalism that held sway in the party from roughly 1947 to 1972, the party and the country would be better off.

  Rich Lowry

  Country, Real, War

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• There are few problems in the world that economic prosperitycannot help solve. Yet the engines of that prosperity are under fierceattack. The forces that seek power over others have gained the upperhand against those that seek freedom. By harming wealth creation,they cause even more strain on society. Historically, this is nothingnew. State domination over its subjects has roots that connect statism,totalitarianism, communism, and socialism to more modern-day variantsof liberalism and progressivism. It is a constant fight and we mustwin.

  Ziad K. Abdelnour

  Fighting, Roots, Wealth Creation

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• It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.

  Eric Hoffer

  Sports, Art, Literature

  "Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely'". www.nytimes.com. April 25, 1971.

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• Totalitarianism is feudalism in the twelfth century sense of the word.

  Barbara Amiel

  Century, Feudalism

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• In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Culture, Pluralism, Indifference

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.64, Routledge

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• The West has not lived through totalitarianism, with a single ideology for 70 years.We are escaping from the burden of the past, and onlyafter we have done that will we be ready to integrate with Europeand Europe needs Russia.

  Boris Yeltsin

  Past, Russia, Escaping

  1991 Addressing socialist MPs in Strasbourg, 15 Apr.

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• Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.

  Bernard Crick

  Autocracy

  Bernard Crick (1993). “In Defense of Politics”, p.40, University of Chicago Press

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• Mengistu does not understand the meaning of self-determination, either historically or in the abstract. He cannot conceive of a nation as anything but an absolute centralized authority, totalitarianism, for his rule is nothing less than that now.

  Mengistu Haile Mariam

  Determination, Self, Doe

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• The 'gallows' are not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of cruelty, terror and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism.

  Arthur Koestler

  Irreverence, Common, Medieval

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• Book cover, 'Reefer Club' Totalitarianism is when people believe they can punish their way to perfection.

  Newt Gingrich

  War, Believe, Book

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• Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter's conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could 'participate' substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party has so much as publicly remarked on the existence of an American empire.

  Chalmers Johnson

  Party, Elements, Empires

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• If no divine law is recognized above the law of the State, then the law of man has become absolute in men's eyes--there is then no logical barrier to totalitarianism.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  Eye, Men, Law

  Greg L. Bahnsen (1985). “By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today”, p.175, American Vision

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• Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.

  Eric Hoffer

  Type, Reduction, Categories

  Eric Hoffer (1963). “The Ordeal of Change”

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