Top 139 Totalitarianism Quotes & Sayings

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

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

The only successful revolution of this century is totalitarianism.

I suspect that in our loathing of totalitarianism, there is infused a good deal of admiration for its efficiency.

Liberalism will beat totalitarianism by killing it softly, not by mimicking it.

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.

A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

I regard Marxism as the most sinister and the most subtle form of totalitarianism.

The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.

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

Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.

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.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

The real division in the world today is not between socialism and capitalism, it's between freedom and totalitarianism.

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

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.

As with fascism, the rise of Islamic totalitarianism has partly to do with its populist appeal to the class resentments of an economically oppressed population and to anger at political subordination and humiliation.

People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights - this is the true left in the United States.

The ultimate end of any ideology is totalitarianism.

[Albert Camus] always held a profound commitment [engagement], a real resistance to all totalitarianism.

The new soft totalitarianism that is advancing on the left wants to have a state religion. It is an atheist, nihilistic religion - but it is a religion that is obligatory for all

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

Let us never allow ourselves to think that poverty is an excuse for an invitation to totalitarianism, and if we should be tempted to think as much, let us remind ourselves that totalitarianism not only extinguishes liberty but institutionalises poverty as well

Remember what Hannah Arendt said when she was talking about fascism and totalitarianism. She said thoughtlessness is the essence of totalitarianism. So all of a sudden emotion becomes more important than reason. Ignorance becomes more important than justice. Injustice is looked over as simply something that happens on television. The spectacle of violence takes over everything.

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.

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

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

Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.

The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.

We must get rid of the IRS. It's a bureaucracy fraught with totalitarianism.

In contrast to totalitarianism, democracy can face and live with the truth about itself.

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.

The gates of heaven surely are closed to those who decline to oppose totalitarianism with all their might.

East Germany was so total in its totalitarianism that everything was banned which wasn't compulsory.

In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

Revolution means democracy in today's world, not the enslavement of peoples to the corrupt and degrading horrors of totalitarianism

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

Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

What Trump is not smart enough to even grasp is that the kind of popularity that Putin has can only be achieved in the context of retro-totalitarianism.

Corporate nationalism to me is a little bit like what would have happened if Hitler had won. It's scary stuff. It's totalitarianism in a different from, under a different flavour.

The new soft totalitarianism that is advancing on the left wants to have a state religion It is an atheist, nihilistic religion - but it is a religion that is obligatory for all.

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.

Totalitarianism is not about some state that appears out of nowhere and suddenly is all-powerful. There can't be any such thing. Totalitarianism starts when the difference between your public life and your private life is effaced.

Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom.

Hannah Arendt in her study of totalitarianism borrowed from Immanuel Kant the concept of radical evil, of evil that's so evil that in the end it destroys itself, it's so committed to evil and it's so committed to hatred and cruelty that it becomes suicidal. My definition of it is the surplus value that's generated by totalitarianism. It means you do more violence, more cruelty than you absolutely have to to stay in power.

Russia needs a strong state power and must have it. But I am not calling for totalitarianism.

This is naturally the most important thing, the dark traces left by the era of totalitarianism in the human mind, where is - are difficult to do away with. And this is a very demanding job.

Large swathes of people losing faith in democracy is a dangerous thing. Conflict, desperation, totalitarianism are the products of that loss of faith.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

Well-intentioned liberalism always leads to progressivism. There's no choice there. Once that action is taken the only thing you can run on is totalitarianism - you have no choice.

Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism .

Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.

It will be a war of national liberation. We believe the people reject totalitarianism.

Having lived through the transition from totalitarianism, I am acutely mindful of the need to never take for granted the basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief that democracy brings.

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

Comedy is the only weapon I have to battle totalitarianism.

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it.

Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state.

Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.