Totalitarism Quotes & Sayings

Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements. Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch. — Milan Kundera

Nothing is so rare as a man who gets everything he wants in life, — Robert J. Crane

Orwell's 1984 [ ... ] is political thought disguised as a novel; the thinking is certainly lucid and correct, but it is distorted by its guise as a novel, which renders it imprecise and vague. [ ... ] the situations and the characters are as flat as a poster.
The pernicious influence of Orwell's novel resides in its implacable reduction of a reality to its political dimension alone, and in its reduction of that dimension to what is exemplarily negative about it. I refuse to forgive this reduction on the grounds that it was useful as propaganda in the struggle against totalitarian evil. For that evil is, precisely, the reduction of life to politics and of politics to propaganda. So despite its intentions, Orwell's novel itself joins in the totalitarian spirit, the spirit of propaganda. It reduces (and teaches others to reduce) the life of a hated society to the simple listing of its crimes. — Milan Kundera

In my opinion it is less shameful for a king to be overcome by force of arms than by bribery. — Sallust

The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they've won ... Take the paradox of Rush Limbaugh, ensconced in a Palm Beach mansion massaging the resentments across the country of white-knuckled wage earners, who are barely making ends meet in no small part because of the corporate and ideological forces for whom Rush has been a hero. — Bill Moyers

Selling MP3s or physical copies, it's still cool, but I think it's slowly becoming outdated to where people just want to build a culture. — Diplo

Relax. Take a break, but don't make it last too long. Otherwise, it will break you down. — M..

And so this is where the post Cold War has brought us: to the recognition that the very totalitarism that we fought against in the decades following WWII might, in quite a few circumstances, be preferable to a situation where nobody is in charge. There are things worse than communism, it turned out, and in Iraq we brought them about ourselves. — Robert D. Kaplan

There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed ... There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor. — Tony Campolo

The fog wasn't simply the steamy vapors off the bay caught and penned in by hills, but a soft breath of anonymity that shrouded and cushioned the bashful traveler. — Maya Angelou

Totalitarian systems are notably devoid of humor at every level. Laughter, which brings acceptance and freedom, is a threat to their rule through force and intimidation. It is hard to oppress people who have a good sense of humor. Beware the humorless, whether in a person, institution, or belief system; it is always accompanied by an impulse to control and dominate, even if its proclaimed objective is to create prosperity or peace. — David R. Hawkins

My mom didn't write, but she loved to read. She liked books 'that made you a little nervous.' Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub were the three wise men of our family bookshelf. — Michael Easton

People who feel positively think differently. They think better. — Deborah Norville

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. — John Steinbeck

Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs joked, 'It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell. — Walter Isaacson

The most sacred thing is to be able to shut your own door. — G.K. Chesterton

His [Mayakovsky] genius was as indispensable to the Russian Revolution as Dzherzhinsky's police. Lyricism, lyricization, lyrical talk, lyrical enthusiasm are an integrating part of what is called the totalitarian world; that world is not the gulag as such; it's a gulag that has poems plastering its outside walls and people dancing before them. — Milan Kundera