187 Quotes About Totalitarianism

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever.

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity.

Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

Yes, our country has its shortcomings, but there's no moral equivalency between democracy and totalitarianism…There's no moral equivalency between propaganda and the truth.

Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great."[Six Questions for Slavoj Žižek, Harper's Magazine, November 11, 2011]

The collapse of the distinction between truth and fiction (and the confusion that this engenders) opens the door for fascist, totalitarian forces—both out in the world and within our own minds—to control and manipulate us.

But there is a difference between the systematic evil of totalitarianism and the ordinary corruption we find in all institutions, at all times. Totalitarianism is a system of highly organized murder and oppression, driven by ideology. American institutions, in comparison, were not created to facilitate mass murder and dictatorship.

The entire stock of relationships which suited in war—militiae—was regarded as inadmissible and improper in peace—domi. We have the measure of how right the Romans were in this respect in the experience of the intellectual and moral impoverishment brought about by total mobilisation.