Totalitarian State Quotes

• A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

  Aldous Huxley

  Powerful, Army, Brave New World

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

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

  Ayn Rand

  Differences, Liberty, Matter

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• Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.

  Mark Skousen

  Failure, Pay, Ultimate Success

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• The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

  Adolf Hitler

  Fear, Political, Mein Kampf

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...

  Noam Chomsky

  Media, Political, Democracy

  "On Propaganda". WBAI Interview, chomsky.info. January 1992.

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

  Konrad Zuse

  News, States

  Konrad Zuse (2013). “The Computer - My Life”, p.55, Springer Science & Business Media

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

  Isabel Paterson

  Education, Historical, Liberty

  Isabel Paterson (1993). “God of the Machine”, p.258, Transaction Publishers

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• In some states militant nationalism has gone to the lengths of dictatorship, the cult of the absolute or totalitarian state and the glorification of war.

  Arthur Henderson

  War, Gone, Length

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• The greatest triumphs of propoganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Views, Silence

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

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• Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure.

  Mark Skousen

  Taxation, Levels, Pay

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• Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

  Aldous Huxley

  Freedom, Brave New World, Views

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

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• Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.

  Adolf Hitler

  Military, War, Enemy

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• Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.

  Hannah Arendt

  Peace, Mean, Peculiar

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.47, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle, hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.

  George Orwell

  Jobs, Wall, Home

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: A patriot after all, 1940-1941”

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• A new fascism promises security from the terror of crime. All that is required is that we take away the criminals' rights - which, of course, are our own. Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel a sense of security from the new totalitarian state.

  Gerry Spence

  Rights, Tyrants, Promise

  Gerry Spence (1999). “Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century”, p.408, Macmillan

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• Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of the marketplace.

  Milton Friedman

  Army, Two, Liberty

  Milton Friedman (2017). “Milton Friedman on Freedom: Selections from The Collected Works of Milton Friedman”, p.28, Hoover Press

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• As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.

  Adam Smith

  Government, Upset, Management

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• Pick the topic you like: the Middle East, international terrorism, Central America, whatever it is - the picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It's all been a marvelous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting. It's not like a totalitarian state, where it's done by force. These achievements are under conditions of freedom.

  Noam Chomsky

  Lying, Reality, America

  Noam Chomsky (2011). “Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda”, p.37, Seven Stories Press

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

  Bernard-Henri Levy

  Truth Is, States, Chains

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• I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state... a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it.

  William L. Shirer

  Lying, Taken, Years

  William L. Shirer (2011). “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, p.423, RosettaBooks

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• Of course, we knew that the official reports were sketchy, if not falsified. But, in terms of information theory, this is precisely where the problem lay: How were we to reconstruct reality from incomplete or false reports? It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false. On the contrary, most news is completely correct, albeit tendentiously slanded; it is just that certain information is suppressed. One can adjust for the political slanting of the news, but there is virtually no way to fill in the omissions.

  Konrad Zuse

  Reality, Omission, Justice

  "The Computer - My Life".

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• One thing that all the totalitarian states did was make the great leader's face everywhere.

  Tim Wu

  Leader, Faces, States

  Source: www.npr.org

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• A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.

  George Orwell

  Mistake, Past, Order

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.259, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Only religious fanatics and totalitarian states equate morality with legality.

  Linus Torvalds

  Religious, Hippie, Morality

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• I believe strongly that most people in this country U.S. don't want a totalitarian state...And when conservatives say, "Get the government out of my backyard," the reality is, you can't say that and put somebody in the White House who's gonna be in your business.

  Whoopi Goldberg

  Country, Believe, Reality

  "Whoopi Goldberg Is the Fashion Week Muse We Need". Interview with Faran Krentcil, www.elle.com. September 12, 2016.

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