“Having old friends is the politics of last resort. And making new ones is the first step toward change.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“In the politics of the every day, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“The politics of inevitability is an intellectual coma we put ourselves in.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Armed groups first degrade a political order, and then transform it.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“The capacity for trust and learning can make life seem less chaotic and mysterious, and democratic politics more plausible and attractive.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“some supporters of the unrestrained free market have found that dogma: the claim that science is nothing more than politics.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“The odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more speech,… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“The key to this translation of ideology to politics in both cases was an effective appeal to human experience at the crucial… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Like Hitler, the President used the word lies to mean statements of fact not to his liking and presented journalism as a… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“The most intelligent of the Nazis, the legal theorist Carl Schmitt, explained in clear language the essence of fascist governance. The way… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“When politicians today invoke terrorism they are speaking, of course, of an actual danger. But when they try to train us to… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Extremism' certainly sounds bad, and governments often try to make it sound worse by using the word 'terrorism' in the same sentence.… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Professions can create forms of ethical conversation that are impossible between a lonely individual and a distant government. If members of professions… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being might suit our moment. Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Extremism certainly sounds bad, and governments often try to make it sound worse by using the word terrorism in the same sentence.… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions--even when that… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Political calculation and local suffering do not entirely explain the participation in these pogroms. Violence against Jews served to bring the Germans… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“The politics of inevitability is a self-induced intellectual coma. So long as there was a contest between communist and capitalist systems, and… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Both of these positions, inevitability and eternity, are antihistorical. The only thing that stands between them is history itself. History allows us… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“We share Hitler's planet and several of his preoccupations; we have changed less than we think. We like our living space, we… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,/That ever I was born to set it right!” Thus Hamlet. Yet he concludes: “Nay, come,… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“the democracies that arose after the First World War (and the Second) often collapsed when a single party seized power in some combination of… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“salami tactics—slicing off layers of opposition one by one. Most people were distracted, some were imprisoned, and others were outmatched.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“We allowed ourselves to accept the politics of inevitability, the sense that history could move in only one direction: toward liberal democracy...We imbibed the… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“The key to this translation of ideology to politics in both cases was an effective appeal to human experience at the crucial time.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“Both of these positions, inevitability and eternity, are antihistorical. The only thing that stands between them is history itself. History allows us to see… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“The whole notion of disruption is adolescent: It assumes that after the teenagers make a mess, the adults will come and clean it up.… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“As she observed, “the first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“Once we subliminally accept that we are watching a reality show rather than thinking about real life, no image can actually hurt the president… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“Confidence in duration is the antidote to panic and the tonic of demagogy.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
“Extremism' certainly sounds bad, and governments often try to make it sound worse by using the word 'terrorism' in the same sentence. But the… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share
