“The point of politics is to keep multiple and irreducible goods in play, rather than yielding to some dream, Nazi or otherwise,… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“WE TEND TO assume that institutions will automatically maintain themselves against even the most direct attacks. This was the very mistake that… — 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
“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
“The psychological and political reasons to overcompensate by insisting on victimhood were strong.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“If young people do not begin to make history, politicians of eternity and inevitability will destroy it. And to make history, young… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“On the political Right, the erosion of state power by international capitalism seems natural; on the political Left, rudderless revolutions portray themselves… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“We are in the presence,” said Winston Churchill, “of a crime without a name.” Its perpetrators were human beings, operating with initiative… — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
“When we take an active interest in matters of doubtful relevance at moments that are chosen by tyrants and spooks, we participate… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“Confidence in duration is the antidote to panic and the tonic of demagogy.” — Timothy Snyder Copy Share Image
