Timothy Snyder

“Make eye contact and small talk.”

— Timothy Snyder

“Do not obey in advance.”

— Timothy Snyder

“History does not repeat, but it does instruct.”

— Timothy Snyder

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.”

— Timothy Snyder

“Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy.”

— Timothy Snyder

“patriotism involves serving your own country.”

— Timothy Snyder

“Be reflective if you must be armed.”

— Timothy Snyder

“If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others. If”

— Timothy Snyder

“The politics of inevitability is a self-induced intellectual coma.”

— Timothy Snyder

“Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.”

— Timothy Snyder

“If young people do not begin to make history, politicians and inevitability will destroy it.”

— Timothy Snyder

“The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow.”

— Timothy Snyder

“A common American error is to believe that freedom is the absence of state authority.”

— Timothy Snyder

“Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you.”

— Timothy Snyder

“But opposing evil requires inspiration by what is sound rather than by what is resonant.”

— Timothy Snyder

“the Nazis first and the Soviets later made efforts to direct responsibility for the killing of the Jews to the countries they…

— Timothy Snyder

“There is no doctrine called extremism. When tyrants speak of extremists, they just mean people who are not in the mainstream—as the…

— Timothy Snyder

“We are free only insofar as we exercise control over what people know about us, and in what circumstances they come to…

— Timothy Snyder

“Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.”

— Timothy Snyder

“Rather than defining facts or generating interpretations, we are seduced by the notion of hidden realities and dark conspiracies that explain everything.…

— Timothy Snyder

“Beyond manipulation itself there was no object or subject of politics. There was only the darkness that is consummate when gifted minds…

— Timothy Snyder

“Will we in retrospect see the elections of 2016 much as Russians see the elections of 1990, or Czechs the elections of…

— Timothy Snyder

“Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning.”

— Timothy Snyder

“Does the history of tyranny apply to the United States? Certainly the early Americans who spoke of “eternal vigilance” would have thought…

— Timothy Snyder

“We allowed ourselves to accept the politics of inevitability, the sense that history could move in only one direction: toward liberal democracy...We…

— Timothy Snyder

“You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case. This…

— Timothy Snyder

“The likelihood that Jews would be sent to their deaths depended upon the durability of institutions of state sovereignty and the continuity…

— Timothy Snyder

“If we are serious about seeking the facts, we can each make a small revolution in the way the internet works. If…

— Timothy Snyder

“The German settlers would defend Europe itself at the Ural Mountains, against the Asiatic barbarism that would be forced back to the…

— Timothy Snyder

“If lawyers had followed the norm of no execution without trial, if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent,…

— Timothy Snyder

“The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away,…

— Timothy Snyder

“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events…

— Timothy Snyder

“History allows us to see patterns and make judgments. It sketches for us the structures within which we can seek freedom. It…

— Timothy Snyder

“History can familiarize, and it can warn. In the late nineteenth century, just as in the late twentieth century, the expansion of…

— Timothy Snyder

“Some of the political and historical texts that inform the arguments made here are “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell…

— Timothy Snyder

“There is no doctrine called extremism. When tyrants speak of extremists, they just mean people who are not in the mainstream—as the…

— Timothy Snyder

“The danger we now face is of a passage from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity, from a naive…

— Timothy Snyder

“Both fascism and communism were responses to globalization: to the real and perceived inequalities it created, and the apparent helplessness of the…

— Timothy Snyder

“Citizenship in modern states means access to bureaucracy. Bureaucracy has the reputation of killing Jews; it would be closer to the truth…

— Timothy Snyder

“States should invest in science so that the future can be calmly contemplated.”

— Timothy Snyder