

“Nothing perhaps distinguishes modern masses as radically from those of previous centuries as the loss of faith in the last judgment: the worst have lost their fear, and the best have lost their hope.”
― The Origins of Totalitarianism
― The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Racism may indeed carry out the doom of the Western world and, for that matter, of the whole of human civilization. When Russians have become Slavs, when Frenchmen have assumed the role of commanders of a force noire, when Englishmen have turned into "white men," as already for a disastrous spell all Germans became Aryans, then this change will itself signify the end of Western man. For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death.”
― The Origins of Totalitarianism
― The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
― The Origins of Totalitarianism
― The Origins of Totalitarianism
“Did you ever notice that new music, now, is nowhere near as great as the music you loved as a teenager? And you know what? You’re right. Whether you were a teenager in the 60s, the 90s, or the 2010s, you’re right. The music you loved as a teenager is the sweetest music you’ll ever hear; that music will be, in all likelihood, the greatest, wildest, purest love affair of your whole life.”
― 60 Songs That Explain the '90s
― 60 Songs That Explain the '90s

“It is almost impossible even now to describe what actually happened in Europe on August 4, 1914. ... The first explosion seems to have touched off a chain reaction in which we have been caught ever since and which nobody seems to be able to stop. Nothing which was being done, no matter how stupid, no matter how many people knew and foretold the consequences, could be undone or prevented. Every event had the finality of a last judgment, a judgment that was passed neither by God nor by the devil, but looked rather like the expression of some unredeemably stupid fatality.”
― The Origins of Totalitarianism
― The Origins of Totalitarianism
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