Totalitarian Quotes · Page 2

In a war a totalitarian state has a free hand.

— Paul Feyerabend

Islam should be compared to other totalitarian ideologies like Communism or Fascism.

— Geert Wilders

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

— Hannah Arendt

The great enemy of any totalitarian regime is normalization and trade.

— Robert Scheer

“The Maoist mechanisms of social control have been loosened. A totalitarian state has become merely an authoritarian one.”

— Gordon G. Chang

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

— John le Carre

The nightmare in every democracy, the very nightmare, is if it gets worse and worse and worse, we could end up totalitarian.

— Norman Mailer

“Knowledge can never imprison you, but you can be captive to your ignorance.”

— A.E. Samaan

The totalitarian state is not a force unleashed, the truth is in chains.

— Bernard-Henri Levy

The post-totalitarian malady has taken its most acute form in Romania. And it has taken place for very specific reasons. The repression…

— Octavian Paler

Intellectual and cultural freedom is the most important single precondition for the breakdown of the kinds of tyrannical and totalitarian systems that…

— James H. Billington

There is danger that totalitarian governments, not subject to vigorous popular debate, will underestimate the will and unity of democratic societies where…

— John F. Kennedy

The totalitarian phenomenon is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society…

— Jean Francois Revel

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian…

— William L. Shirer

Those who rebelled against totalitarian rule and those who simply managed to remain themselves and think freely, were all persecuted. We should…

— Vaclav Havel

Putin set out to build a mafia state. He didn't set out to build a totalitarian regime. But he was building his…

— Masha Gessen

“It is itself totalitarian to dismiss peacefully-expressed views on the grounds that some unhinged mind might interpret them violently.”

— Ed West

“This book was under arrest, along with its author. This event occurred on March 27, 1986. During that time, the totalitarian system…

— Todor Bombov

“I’m a nonviolent guy, but the next time some brainwashed Duracell trapped in the Matrix tells you that by curtailing our liberties…

— Sol Luckman

In a totalitarian state like North Korea, a group of neighbors gathering once a week to watch the latest episode of a…

— Tom Malinowski

The deadly weapon against totalitarian society is openness - doing everything very openly on the Internet, letting people know every detail, any…

— Ai Weiwei

The Chinese art world does not exist. In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself…

— Ai Weiwei

No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions.…

— Francis Schaeffer

Kim Jong Un, like all totalitarian leaders, wants above all to ensure his survival. He is convinced that a nuclear strike capability…

— Tom Malinowski

By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For "totalitarian" is not…

— Herbert Marcuse

“I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be linked unto a system of…

— Kurt Vonnegut

There is an absolutely fundamental hostility on the part of totalitarian regimes toward religion.

— Jeane Kirkpatrick

“Things happen fast, during the time of transition in a totalitarian society.”

— Philip K. Dick

It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false.

— Konrad Zuse

There is only one Islam, and that is a totalitarian ideology that has no room for anything but Islam.

— Geert Wilders

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

— Isabel Paterson

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want.

— Harry S. Truman

Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.

— Friedrich Durrenmatt

The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.

— Ayn Rand

Spielberg, like many others, wants to convince before he discusses. In that, there is something very totalitarian.

— Jean-Luc Godard

There is no need to give in to the compromise that totalitarian regimes always count on.

— Svetlana Alexievich

“Public schoolboys are not merely conservatives, they are by nature totalitarian reactionaries.”

— David Benedictus

In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

— Milan Kundera

I've always been fascinated by totalitarian regimes. I'm not an admirer of them.

— Sue Townsend

“In a post-totalitarian dictatorship, the grins of the people are the nightmares of the dictators.”

— Xiaobo Liu