A Quote by George Orwell

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

George Orwell

Quote Topics

Corrupted Country Does Live Totalitarian Totalitarianism

Quote Author

George Orwell
British - Novelist
June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950

Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the Corporate State. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, and the Constitution while manipulating internal levers.

Chris Hedges

Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.

George Orwell

The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.

Steven Pinker

In general, literature is a natural adversary of totalitarianism. Tyrannical governments all view literature in the same way: as their enemy. I lived for a long time in a totalitarian state, and I know firsthand that horror.

Ismail Kadare

For 73 years a totalitarian regime ruled the country. Totalitarian regime.

Aleksandr Lebed

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

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

For the Left, tolerance does not mean tolerance. It means first, acceptance. And second, celebration. That is totalitarianism: You not only have to live with what you may differ with, dear citizen, you have to celebrate it or pay a steep price.

Dennis Prager

None of the evils which totalitarianism ... claims to remedy is worse than totalitarianism itself.

Albert Camus

I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.

Robert H. Jackson

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

We know what totalitarian looks like, we know what oppression looks like, we know what the dumb culture of totalitarianism smells like. This is it! It's happening now, and the future of the world is being decided. So, get out there, make your own sites, take action!

Alex Jones

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

Jose Saramago

North Korean defectors often find it hard to settle down. It is not easy for somebody who’s escaped a totalitarian country to live in the free world. Defectors have to rediscover who they are in a world that offers endless possibilities. Choosing where to live, what to do, even which clothes to put on in the morning is tough enough for those of us accustomed to making choices; it can be utterly paralyzing for people who’ve had decisions made for them by the state their entire lives.