Totalitarianism Quotes

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? (Mahatma Gandhi)
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda. View quote
Hannah Arendt
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. View quote
Stephen Harper
It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. but business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Totalitarianism is feudalism in the twelfth century sense of the word. View quote
Barbara Amiel
Mengistu does not understand the meaning of self-determination, either historically or in the abstract. He cannot conceive of a nation as anything but an absolute centralized authority, totalitarianism, for his rule is nothing less than that now. View quote
Mengistu Haile Mariam
Globalization is a form of totalitarianism... It is the rich who rule, and the poor live as they can. View quote
José Saramago
Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. 'This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. 'I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. 'Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.' Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect. View quote
Salman Rushdie
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. View quote
Miloš Forman
If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world. View quote
Richard Nixon
Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism. (Sam Shepard)
If no divine law is recognized above the law of the State, then the law of man has become absolute in men's eyes--there is then no logical barrier to totalitarianism. View quote
Greg L. Bahnsen
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. View quote
Lance Henriksen
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. View quote
Rocco Buttiglione
Calling socialism, under which the popular masses are the masters of everything, "totalitarianism" is, ultimately, a preposterous lie which identifies the most progressive idea that reflects the demands of the popular masses with the reactionary idea of fascist rulers. View quote
Kim Jong-il
To declare the Cold War over, and declare democracy has won out over totalitarianism, is a measure of arrogance and wrong-headedness. View quote
Alexander Haig
The government officials, along with the courtiers and the press, ... insist that congressional and judicial oversight, the right to privacy, the rule of law, the freedom of the press, the right to express dissent remains inviolate. They use the old words and old phrases, old laws and old constitutional guarantees, to give our corporate totalitarianism a democratic veneer. View quote
Chris Hedges
Totalitarianism no longer comes in the form of communism or fascism. It comes now from corporations. And these corporations fear those who think and write, those who speak out and form relationships freely. Individual freedom impedes their power and their profits. Our democracy, as Snowden I think has revealed, has become a fiction. The state, through elaborate forms of political theater, seeks to maintain this fiction to keep us passive. And if we wake up, the state will not shy away from draconian measures. The goal is complete subjugation, the iron rule of our corporations and our power elite. View quote
Chris Hedges
The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning. The opposite of a Greek drama. Act one: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act two: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act three: Greed and hypocrisy ... I don't dare continue. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved - Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal - God is the Omnipotent Father - hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. View quote
Gore Vidal
The modern doctrines of diversity and multiculturalism are a kind of homogenizing totalitarianism. Its acolytes want every institution to be filled with people who look different but think alike. What our society needs is not more "diversity” of this sort but more variety. Different communities and institutions need to be able live differently, because it is only with this kind of variety that a diverse people can find places where they all feel at home and where they can all find a kind of meaning that suits them as individuals. (Jonah Goldberg)
While one should always be vigilant for traces of totalitarianism in any ideology or movement, the obsession with fascism in the anti-Hindu rhetoric of the secularists is not the product of an analysis of the data, but of their own political compulsions. View quote
Koenraad Elst
After I wrote Handmaid's Tale, people came up to me and asked why weren't there any protests. And I said, "You don't understand totalitarianism.” A real totalitarianism doesn't fool around with protests in the streets. View quote
Margaret Atwood
First, America must have a strong defense. We must never forget that our national defense is about much more than the land within our borders. Just as we fought and conquered totalitarianism during World War Two - just as we fought and conquered communism during the Cold War - we are defending the idea of freedom itself. View quote
Al Gore
A powerful critical talent who destroyed his own sense of proportion, Leavis was our brush with totalitarianism: we caught it as a mild fever instead of the full attack of meningitis. His career was the clearest possible proof that the course the arts take is not under the control of criticism. View quote
F. R. Leavis