Best Totalitarianism Quotes

"The attentive eye...was the antidote to totalitarian proclivity."

"But if this power falls into the hands of a 21st-century Stalin, the result will be the worst totalitarian regime in human history."

"Totalitarianism stems from being so terrified of death that you give the group complete control over your life."

"Individualism is often defined as the opposite of totalitarianism."

"My biggest fear in the future is a totalitarian government."

"The spirit of totalitarianism... is looking to fulfill the darkest impulse of our fallen nature: to conquer, to dominate, and to enslave."

"History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the party is always right."

"All tops-down solutions end up fascist and totalitarian over time or just bad and not quite right."

"It's almost impossible to convey to a free people what it's like to live in a totalitarian dictatorship."

"Propaganda, surveillance, disinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation and rewriting of the past are textbook characteristics of a totalitarian state."

"These figures such as Trudeau and Rishi Sunak, if you ask me, are the new faces of totalitarianism masquerading as advanced, socially diverse, open, and inclusive figures."

"A country where free speech is restricted more than a lot of totalitarian governments would be a terrible thing."

"The government becomes the savior that people are seeking in their fear, and totalitarianism is always wrong."

"Crisis totalitarianism means to make all things submit to the management of the crisis, no matter how important they are."

"The party doesn't just want power over your behavior; they want power over your mind."

"1984 is a cautionary tale about what a totalitarian government can become, alerting us to how a nation can degenerate unless its people are willing and able to keep a close eye on it."

"This is why all the totalitarian regimes in history have tried to burn all of the books."

"Once I understood the connection between lying and the totalitarian state, well, there's no way I'm going to say things that are false."

"The totalitarian systems of the 20th century represent a kind of collective psychosis."

"The order of a totalitarian world is a pathological order."

"Parallel structures function as an enclave of freedom and sanity within a totalitarian world."

"Action by as many people as possible is required to prevent a full descent into the madness of totalitarianism."

"That's not democracy, it's the opposite, it's totalitarianism."

"It's totalitarian Chris because a totalitarian society, in the barest definition, is one in which only one ideology is allowed to have power."

"The resistance of totalitarianism: technology is a double-edged sword, it provides the tools for oppression and the tools for the ongoing fight for freedom."

"America fought against totalitarianism in the 20th century."

"Totalitarianism relies on mass support... contemporary societies desperately need more people to withdraw their support of this brutal form of rule."

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows."

"For the next quarter of a century he ruled the Soviet Union in a totalitarian fashion, murdering millions in his quest to retain absolute power."

"In a truly totalitarian state husbands lie to their wives and parents lie to their children and the totalitarian state is actually the grip of the lie."

"Totalitarian efforts to make sure everyone is safe all the time result in a lack of safety for everyone."

"Orwell believed that the foundations of totalitarianism lay in the misuse of language to manipulate the truth and was pessimistic about humanity’s tendency to be subject to such manipulation."

"I believe firmly that this generation will be judged by our success or our failure at standing up to a totalitarian impulse in the United States." - John Meacham

"People are kind of going back and forth about this and they're just talking about the ridiculousness of trying to create some kind of totalitarian solution to something that is not really a big problem."

"A second wave of totalitarianism rearing its ugly head."

"That's what a totalitarian society looks like." - Michael Knowles

"Nothing could be more fundamentally at odds with what America is itself... than totalitarianism being bipartisan."

"In society, totalitarian state where all your thoughts are policed, do not comply."

"All totalitarian regimes strive to destroy the close-knit family in order to remove any loyalties that might be higher than to the state itself."

"Driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism and it is completely alien to our culture and to our values."

"I think CBDCs are so dangerous because they are a totalitarian control system where you're in a digital prison."

"Forget ‘hate speech’. For me, this is the most dangerous kind of language — the language of totalitarian ultimatums, that seeks to conquer by dividing, trying to come between us and our loved ones in order to achieve total subservience."

"The choice is either up or down. We either go up to the eternal rules of right and the principles that are found in the scriptures that history shows produce maximum human flourishing, or we go down to the ash heap of totalitarianism."

"Cults are almost always built on a totalitarian power structure. No one group has the power to question their Authority because this person is looked at as their only hope for salvation."

"We're seeing this totalitarianism from the countries that always call themselves democracies."

"The biggest risk to us is that we unwittingly succumb to totalitarianism."

"It's not cancelled culture, it's totalitarianism."

"Can disclosure happen in a totalitarian society? Certainly looks like it to me."

"Once you start censoring, you're on your way to dystopia and totalitarianism."

"Communism is probably the most evil governmental system ever. It's worse than any other systematic destruction of honesty, objectivity, truth, the deification of government, and the destruction of humanity."

"In a totalitarian system, even one dissident is dangerous." - Vladimir Bukovsky

"Stalin inherited a fully-formed terror state, he ramped up the scale of its oppression but the machinery was there and taking over Lenin had built it."

"Mass psychosis is necessary for totalitarian control."

"This is a turning point in humanity whether we continue to become more free and open or if we regress to total totalitarianism."

"It is very important for everyone to note that we are in the midst of a battle between freedom and totalitarianism." - Congressman Michael McCaul

"We are seeing the dawn of totalitarianism in the west, and the vaccine passport is the back door to it."

"If you're not human and don't worship the Emperor, then you are the enemy, a heretic, and must be exterminated; diplomacy is almost not a thing for the Imperium."

"Totalitarian regimes in the history of mankind to exert total control over every aspect of human behavior."

"Stalin may have done that. I mean, Stalin is one of the most evil people who ever lived." - Richard Dawkins

"Thank god for the polls and the polls have had some experience with tyranny with communism they've been tyrannized not only by the soviets but by the nazis."

"Intellectual quality against totalitarian mediocrity."

"It is not necessarily fascism that's on the rise, but some kind of totalitarianism."

"Freedom is much better than the totalitarianism."

"If you stop people from talking about their ideas, you get a journey into totalitarianism."

"Totalitarian regimes always use crisis claims to justify censorship. That's how tyranny works."

"Connect with each other to combat totalitarianism."

"Free speech exists outside of the First Amendment. It's a human right, the right to express yourself without fear of bodily harm."

"Censorship only works in a totalitarian system. It only works if you've got control of absolutely everything."

"Absolutely insane and police state... is becoming increasingly totalitarian."

"These laws have been building the mechanisms for a totalitarian police state piece by piece."

"Totalitarianism is right here in the land of the free, in the home of the brave."

"Totalitarianism starts from an ideological conviction, a blind and fanatic ideological conviction."

"Whenever you look at totalitarian regimes, the government will use anything in their power to suppress individual thought."

"The obfuscation belies the totalitarian behavior. It's shocking and horrendous."

"Trump is part of a larger collective of authoritarian thought of totalitarian behavior."

"The most powerful totalitarian government would control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because they love their slavery." - Aldous Huxley

"This attack on parental rights is totalitarianism to the extreme."

"1984 forecasted a future that was predicated on a police state, mind control, thought police, and conformity."

"This is completely unacceptable this is totally anti-American but I think this is anti-human this is not the right way to go unless you believe that you know totalitarian censorship is the right way to go so this is actually here Lee Fang writing."

"This whole thing boils down to the freedom of the Chinese people... against a totalitarian dictatorship."

"Each of these Hungarian Jews declared war on totalitarianism."

"What prepares men for totalitarian domination... is the fact that loneliness... has become an everyday experience."

"The overarching objective of The Purge was clear: Stalin sought to eradicate any semblance of dissent or opposition to his totalitarian regime."

"Corporations function as totalitarian systems. They exploit human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse."

"It is being driven by a totalitarian ideology, it's again, I would say, Leninist. You sort of debate how Marxist it is, but certainly, it is sort of a totalitarian one-party control."

"The prerequisite to totalitarianism is the destruction of communities of solidarity."

"It was to be swift and merciless. It would become known as the Night of the Long Knives."

"Despite being toned down to be a comedy, the film still managed to be an interesting satire of totalitarian government regimes."

"My fear is that totalitarian regime might be spread across the world. Knowing the history and researching the period of 1920s, 1930s, I know that for a totalitarian regime, human life has no importance."

"Democracy is just so vegetarian and human-like that it can't protect itself from totalitarianism."

"Communism results in totalitarian regime, equated with fascism."

"We're a very gentle totalitarianism for Jews."

"I think in Nazi Germany, I mean, hell, look at China right now. Look at China right now. I cannot think of, if I'm honest, I can't think of a better example of a fascist state. Saying that it's mixed communist is begging the question. It is not a stateless, classless society."

"That's how we turn things into hell. If you want to know why totalitarian states take the brutal twists they take and why people are motivated to do the absolutely terrible things that they do."

"Cabaret is a cautionary tale against complacency, against willful ignorance, against lazy acceptance of the status quo."

"At its core, Cabaret is a devastating critique of apathy and a clever and terrifying look at totalitarianism."

"The worst thing you can do is censor speech. That is the first step, the next step is this slippery slope into totalitarianism."

"Solzhenitsyn rightly captures that this was a calamity of the first order with millions even tens of millions perishing at the hands of an ideological despotism."

"Get ready to be shocked as we unveil the astonishing details that will leave you questioning the extent of power and control in this totalitarian state."

"We've seen a level of totalitarianism that is unprecedented... across all the liberal democracies in the world."

"More than any other war in history, it was dominated in the age of totalitarianism by major figures."

"If people can't have the freedom in the Public Square to pursue rational and reasonable inquiries, we are inevitably headed in totalitarian directions."

"The totalitarian conception of science, scientism, closes the cage and allows for the weaponization of science."

"The core feature of totalitarian systems is the prohibition of questions."

"Totalitarianism means that no aspect of life is left alone. Film, radio, whatever, the streets are dominated by Nazism then the home also."

"If you're a deeply committed totalitarian, so deeply you can't even see it, yeah, that's anti-American."

"In inverted totalitarianism you have corporate forces that purport to be loyal to the constitution electoral politics the iconography and language of American patriotism and yet internally have subverted all the levers of power to render the citizen impotent."

"The peculiarity of the totalitarian state is that though it controls thought, it doesn't fix it. It sets up unquestionable dogmas and it alters them from day to day."

"George Orwell's 1984 is a chilling portrayal of life under a totalitarian regime."

"To cement his hold on the nation, Hitler decided to purge the country of what he considered to be enemies of the state."

"We should teach kids what it is to be human, and if what you do instead is what we do increasingly today in what average totalitarian Society does which is try to make them into something, we forget that they already are something they are humans."

"Totalitarianism stems from forgetting or hating God."

"Totalitarianism thrives when truth is obscured."

"There are seeds being sown that are totalitarian in nature."

"We often think of Plato as the father of modern totalitarianism."

"A regime that honors religious liberty, by definition, ceases to be totalitarian."

"The whispered song, a clandestine society, seeks to liberate Nadal from the iron grip of the umbral court's totalitarian rule."

"Nazism is totalitarian, that really means they wanted total control of all aspects of life."

"The totalitarian rule of the Nazis and Hitler in the 1930s and early 1940s was ruinous for not only Germany and the German people."

"...the emergence of totalitarianism is a gradual attack on this steady balance."

"No Karl Popper's going to say that what makes the sales pitch of a totalitarian or fascist regime so easy to get on board with is because it's often rooted in some of the oldest most revered political theory in the history of the Western canon."

"That was the moment it became a totalitarian state, when the state actually gets in your bedroom, then it controls the total person."

"We need to rediscover what it means to have a shared purpose and how to make this compatible with a non-totalitarian view."

"These technologies are cementing into place a supernational, corporate totalitarianism, a world where populations are enslaved in ways that past totalitarian regimes could only imagine."

"Instead of hoping that the world will bring freedom to China, the U.S fears that the CCP will bring a totalitarian police state to the world, and will do so to an extent that not even George Orwell himself could have imagined."

"One is extreme obsessiveness regarding the leader, individual identity is increasingly blurred, you're criticized if any questions are put out there."

"It's the totalitarianism, it's the groupthink, one way, that should be a red flag."

"Nazi Germany was a totalitarian state, ruled by the Nazi party, ruled by the dictator Adolf Hitler."

"Only an unabashed acceptance of the similarities between the Nazi and Soviet systems permits an understanding of their differences."

"...the message they have for us in the West today about the new softer totalitarianism that they see emerging."

"In a totalitarian society, it's obvious what they're afraid of. They're afraid of the midnight knock on the door and the secret police coming to arrest them."

"It's a form of tyranny, it's a form of authoritarianism, totalitarianism."

"We have absolutely disrupted. You think this might lead us into a kind of electric totalitarianism?"

"The reading of great literature is a defense against the soul-crushing effects of totalitarian regimes."

"This is Canada, this is the United Kingdom, this is Germany. Totalitarianism, it's tyranny, and it's based on lies."

"Totalitarianisms and authoritarianisms go after women. They go after everybody, but they have special plans for women."

"It's simple and it's one god, one king, one ruler, one caliphate. It all seems to line up perfectly for a theocracy totalitarian way of life."

"All these guys, arguably as bad as Hitler, and other than Hitler, all three were communists. It's almost like communism is not a good idea. It's almost like it's a horrific form of government that no one should ever try again ever."

"No matter how powerful the totalitarian state was, it couldn't stand up to actual truth."

"What we figured out and what we learned even more was that there are an awful lot of totalitarians that live among us and they want to control every aspect of our lives."

"Although George Orwell's 1984 is a brilliant dystopian forum, it is a very important warning against totalitarianism."

"He says people don't fully comprehend what's to come: a digital totalitarian state where algorithms decide your fate and nothing can be questioned."

"In a totalitarian state, an innovator whose ideas are disliked by the government is not merely put to death... but is totally prevented from causing his doctrine to be known."

"The reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge remains a grim lesson in the devastating impact of extremist ideologies when enforced through totalitarian rule."

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

"Being in a totalitarian state... you could kind of feel it in a way that was very different."

"Freedom to communicate, freedom to discuss, freedom of information, freedom to choose - if those things are not important to you, then what you are trending towards is a kind of totalitarianism."

"Hong Kong's autonomy to totalitarianism."

"Totalitarianism...destroys social, legal, and political traditions; it transforms classes into masses."

"Totalitarian governments rely on people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, the reality of experience, and the distinction between true and false, no longer exist."

"It's a brilliantly totalitarian dictatorship, but they got it covered."

"Totalitarianism reigned, individualism was dead, reality and history were simply a matter of opinion."

"Ingsoc controls all... to say it changed society is an understatement; Ingsoc destroyed society and remade it into something where only it can thrive."

"The Nazi terror state had effectively created a regime where surveillance was omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent."

"It was the accumulation of micro lies that built up to produce the Nazis and the Stalinists."

"When things get totalitarian, everyone becomes a possible enemy."

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exists."

"The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood about the Republic of Gilead where women's bodies are regulated and controlled in this totalitarian system."

"The Cold War was a death match between the forces representing freedom and the forces representing totalitarianism."

"Germany is a totalitarian state... Hitler has almost absolute control."

"Totalitarian leaders... total control over all aspects of citizens' lives."