146 Quotes by Anne Applebaum

Throughout history, pandemics have led to an expansion of the power of the state: at times when people fear death, they go along with measures that they believe, rightly or wrongly, will save them – even if that means a loss of freedom.

Sometimes the point isn't to make people believe a lie - it's to make people fear the liar.

At base, the ugly meaning of collaborator carries an implication of treason: betrayal of one's nation, of one's ideology, of one's morality, of one's values.

Russian scorn for liberal democracy has a long history, and a certain kind of Russian disdain for the West is nothing new. As far back as 1920, Lenin declared that parliaments were 'historically obsolete' and predicted that it was just a matter of time before they disappeared.

Some voters live in a so-called populist bubble, where they hear nationalist and xenophobic messages, learn to distrust fact-based media and evidence-based science, and become receptive to conspiracy theories and suspicious of democratic institutions.

The crisis of Western values has many aspects, many faces. There is a decline in faith in liberal democracy, a loss of confidence in universal human rights, a collapse in support for all kinds of transnational projects.

Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, isolationism was an important, even dominant strand in U.S. politics. After the Second World War, this strand disappeared, smothered by the widespread and bipartisan conviction that the United States needed to stay engaged with the world to prevent future crises.

Americans, as a rule, rarely compare themselves with other countries, so convinced are we that our system is superior, that our politicians are better, that our democracy is the fairest and most robust in the world.

Clearly, the qualities Poles admire in a secretary of state - foreign languages, diplomatic experience, even sense of humor - are emphatically not those desired in a head of state: So be it.