Totalitarian Quotes

“Still, in 1877, Engels wanted to protect us from false socialism. Still then, in Anti-Dühring, he wrote that not any nationalization is socialist, because in the contrary case both Bismarck and Napoleon would have to be arranged among the founders of socialism.”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response.
To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave.”
― Larken Rose

“All utopias are dystopias. The term "dystopia" was coined by fools that believed a "utopia" can be functional.”
― A.E. Samaan

“When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.”
― Ron Paul

“A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government

“There was nothing conservative about Adolf Hitler. Hitler was an artist and a revolutionary at heart. He wanted to completely upend and remake German society.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Communism is what happens when Socialists realize that they want complete control over every aspect of human life.”
― A.E. Samaan

“No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

“Democratic Socialism devolves into totalitarian Socialism and eventually into full on Communism as people resist statism.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Knowledge can never imprison you, but you can be captive to your ignorance.”
― A.E. Samaan

“The weather is wonderful. The sun has excelled itself and the procession passing our microphones is flooded by the bright warm light that comes down from the incredibly blue sky. On the branches of trees I can see birds, thousands of them. It's difficult to believe that we have so many birds. We spend our time grumbling and it takes a festive day like this, after years of mistakes and deviations, to make us realize how we abound in birds. Those birds are singing, they are singing so stupendously that it seems that they are not birds, but...horses.”
― Mrożek Sławomir

“But the people who struggle against what we call totalitarian regimes cannot function with queries and doubts. They, too, need certainties and simple truths to make the multitudes understand, to provoke collective tears.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, just as the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it twice.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“love at first sight
is only possible
if the government

hasn't first
taken your eyes”
― Sam Sax, Madness

“The totalitarians are very ingenious in arousing latent guilt in us by repeating over and over again how criminally the Wester world has acted toward innocent and peaceful people... [sometimes they use ridicule and other times they use boredom to lull people to sleep, under the illusion of peaceful coexistence].”
― Joost A.M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

“Totalitarian regimes hate thinking-people because the thinking-people spits on the borders created to restrict freedoms, and they cross that border without any hesitation!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Rule of law is the grey area between the two extremes, viz. the moral norm of individual liberty and state coercion. When it is at the former end, it is anarchy; when at the latter, it is totalitarian repressive state. In the real world, every state operates somewhere between these two extremes. Democracies have to place restrictions on individual liberty to prevent a descent into anarchy; dictators have to provide a modicum of individual freedom to prevent desperate rebellion.”
― R. N. Prasher

“The Communist revolution, conducted in the name of doing away with classes, has resulted in the most complete authority of any single new class ... The new class is voracious and insatiable, just as the bourgeoisie was. But it does not have the virtues of frugality and economy that the bourgeoisie had. The new class is as exclusive as the aristocracy but without aristocracy's refinement and proud chivalry ...
The totalitarian tyranny and control of the new class, which came into being during the revolution, has become the yoke from under which the blood and sweat of all members of society flow.”
― Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis Of The Communist System

“I’m a nonviolent guy, but the next time some brainwashed Duracell trapped in the Matrix tells you that by curtailing our liberties the authorities are ‘just trying to protect us,’ please do yourself and freedom a favor by sucker-punching them in their lying jaw.”
― Sol Luckman, Musings from a Small Island: Everything under the Sun

“There was no such thing as Kazakhstan. It was just a chunk of Soviet Union.
I had to build a country, to establish an army, our own police, our internal life, everything from roads to the constitution. I had to change the minds of the people 180 degrees, from totalitarian regime to freedom, from state property to private property.
Nobody wanted to understand that. My comrades from the communist party were against me. I had to train myself too...
I wasn't raised with democracy and freedom of speech.”
― Nursultan Nazarbayev

“Although America is a country with all the faults that attend a varied humanity, it is nonetheless a symbol of freedom. It is, more precisely, an experiment in freedom where an average person can live a decent life; where the voice of the political fanatic is muted, and the ideologue is distrusted; where even the demagogue must check himself, and make the customary bucolic sounds. The totalitarian misfit, seeking a more glorious existence, can find no sustenance in this kind of politics. If he runs for office, if he is elected, he is demeaned by critics and compelled by bribery. At best he can corrupt the constitutional mechanism in some small way, or he can promote some harmful legislation. But he cannot become dictator without exposing himself to arrest and prosecution. Power is not there to be had. Glory is not there. For the glory-seeking politician there is only final humiliation. Even the most promising presidential career, with high approval ratings, is finally blighted by a negative press. Clinton, Bush, Obama – all two-term presidents – ended their terms as lame ducks, finding themselves encircled by an ever tightening ring of criticism and scandal. Such a political system must appear a kind of prison to the totalitarian.”
― J.R.Nyquist

“Some countries are ruled by humans, but some are ruled by animals! Totalitarian one-man regimes, where opponents are arrested for fabricated reasons, freedom of expression is restricted, reason, logic and science are not prevalent in the country, and religious oppression is effective in all areas of society are in this second group!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“A voice silenced is a voice amplified; the dead scream louder than the living.”
― R. N. Prasher

“Their choice is clear. Stop fighting, turn in your weapons, declare allegiance to our 'New' Republic, and abide forever in peace and security in accordance with the Will of the People. Or... be destroyed.”
― C. Elmon Meade, The Demagogue Wars

“两个人互相对视了一阵，他终于木然走到她身边，张了张嘴唇，想对她说些什么。但是他掏出今天新发布的健康词汇列表，发现上面是一片空白——终于连最后一个词组也被有关部门屏蔽了。”
― Ma Boyong, 寂静之城

“Communists condemn blind belief. Yet, information blackout by all communist states shows reliance on a a bizarre blind belief - If you turn off the lights, nobody can hear the gossip.”
― R. N. Prasher

“Government IDs are just ankle monitors, issued to tag citizens like dogs, or I should say, apes.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood

“Because the chief aim of totalitarian information networks is to produce order rather than discover truth, when alarming information threatens to undermine social order, totalitarian regimes often suppress it. It is relatively easy for them to do so, because they control all the information channels.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“As humankind enters the second quarter of the twenty-first century, a central question is how well democracies and totalitarian regimes will handle both the threats and the opportunities resulting from the current information revolution. Will the new technologies favor one type of regime over the other, or will we see the world divided once again, this time by a Silicon Curtain rather than an iron one?”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI