Quotes About Authoritarianism

#1. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.

Timothy Snyder

#2. Dr Howell drank from the special cup which was tied around the handle with red cotton to distinguish the staff cups from those of the patients, and thus prevent the interchange of disease like boredom loneliness authoritarianism.

Janet Frame

#3. The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed we have tried law , compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.

Albert J. Nock

#4. What, actually, is the difference between communism and fascism? Both are forms of statism, authoritarianism. The only difference between Stalin's communism and Mussolini's fascism is an insignificant detail in organizational structure.

Leonard Read

#5. We begin the path toward defeating Mexico's real adversary, who represents authoritarianism and the worst antidemocratic practice, who represents a return to corruption as a system and impunity as conviction. That adversary is Pena Nieto and his party.

Josefina Vazquez Mota

#6. Liberty, which means resisting all forms of cultural authoritarianism, be it from the right wing church, black ideologues, black nationalists, or mainstream white media. We have to accent liberty and freedom of expression and thought in all their forms.

Cornel West

#7. Disclosure and transparency are the currency of the Internet, and they are at odds with authoritarianism.

Evan Osnos

#8. Clarity of language is the first casualty of authoritarianism.

Robin Morgan

#9. The problem is not religion or God. The actual problem is authoritarianism, mixed with the desire to angrily impose one's personal apparently idealistic beliefs on others.

Abhijit Naskar

#10. The libertarian can have no truck with 'left' or 'right' because he regrets any form of authoritarianism - the use of police force to control the creative life of man.

Leonard Read

#11. For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.

Ama Ata Aidoo

#12. Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.

Ivan Krastev

#13. Strong efforts have been made in Ohio to curb the authoritarianism of our Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, as he has purged people from lists in our State in particular precincts where voters are heavily minority.

Marcy Kaptur

#14. A republic is not an easy form of government to live under, and when the responsibility of citizenship is evaded, democracy decays and authoritarianism takes over.

Earl Warren

#15. To demonize state authoritarianism while ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst.

Bob Black

#16. Authority is God ordained, but authoritarianism and raw power, in almost all forms, is dangerous.

James Dobson

#17. There are certain people within the new government who have a slightly disturbing tendency toward authoritarianism, but there are so many checks and balances that in that way their noises are just noises.

Jonathan Shapiro

#18. The only way into a ministry that sees people's lives change, that brings joy and power and electricity without authoritarianism, is through preaching the gospel to deconstruct both legalism and relativism.

Timothy Keller

#19. Thus, as historian Soledad Loaeza has argued, the authoritarianism that distinguished Mexico during the second half of the 1960s should not be reduced to a series of "paranoid" acts of a single president (as Enrique Krauze and others have insisted).

Jaime Pensado

#20. Teachers have been heroes to me, as well as artists and writers, and I'm honored to be among their ranks. There is always a lot of grousing about the academy. I suppose it comes from our all-American anti-authoritarianism.

Alison Hawthorne Deming

#21. It will be difficult, even painful, but democracy will prevail in Russia. There will be no dictatorship, although relapses into authoritarianism are possible.

Mikhail Gorbachev

#22. Love permits and even respects dissent: Authoritarianism does not. Everybody should learn the difference.

Jeri Massi

#23. The idea [passing the 17th amendment] benefited from a unique political and cultural atmosphere that consumed a nation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries-a progressive populism promoting simultaneously radical egalitarianism and centralized authoritarianism.

Mark Levin

#24. The knock on [Chris] Christie was always the I guy that he was - I felt inordinately talented politician, a smart and in some ways very capable human being, with a personality given toward authoritarianism and bullying and ethical corner-cutting.

Chris Hayes

#25. We will fight and defend my good name in the European court. We have to be strong and defend Ukraine from this authoritarianism.

Yulia Tymoshenko

#26. Religion comes not where reign fundamentalism and authoritarianism.

Abhijit Naskar

#27. If Anonymous and Lulzsec are the id of hacking, then physical hackerspaces are the heart of the higher-minded hacking ideals: freedom of information, meritocracy of ideas, a joy of learning and anti-authoritarianism.

Heather Brooke

#28. Fundamentalism's strident denunciation of its opponents is a sign of its weakness, its dogmatic authoritarianism is a pathological mutation of faith.

Alan Aldridge

#29. If you say that you reject violence when it exceeds the limits imposed by the needs of defense, they accuse you of pacifism, without understanding that violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.

Errico Malatesta

#30. Demanding domestic security in times of war invites carelessness in preserving civil liberties and the right of privacy. Frequently the people are only too anxious for their freedoms to be sacrificed on the altar of authoritarianism thought to be necessary to remain safe and secure.

Ron Paul

#31. Authoritarian systems evolve. Authoritarianism in the Internet Age is not your old Cold War authoritarianism.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#32. Authoritarianism, an unrealistic occidental imagination - these issues will never be settled. Turkey will continue to take Europe as a model; it will continue to pursue its search for democracy.

Orhan Pamuk

#33. We see pluralism: We can see that there are different ideological and political positions in Russia. If the authoritarianism finally ends, we will have real competition.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

#34. Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power.

Josh Marshall

#35. It has been well over half a century and I'm glad to say we have taken the right path from authoritarianism to democracy and this is a road of no return.

Chen Shui-bian

#36. The strengthening of our statehood is, at times, deliberately interpreted as authoritarianism.

Vladimir Putin

#37. As dutiful bishops soon discover, authoritarianism, or control from the top down, characterizes the hierarchical tradition.

Eugene Kennedy

#38. TWO AND TWO MAKES FIVE

George Orwell

#39. The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only of the strength of authoritarian society but also of its weakness.

Robert Anton Wilson

#40. The hallmark of an authoritarian idiot is yelling TERRORIST-LOVER! at anyone questioning the definition of Terrorist.

Glenn Greenwald

#41. States that are built on a religious foundation limit their own people in a circle of faith and fear.

Raif Badawi

#42. The Council is wrong. Yet, observe that none of us will risk telling it so, for fear of the consequences.

Mark Dunn

#43. If fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.

Theodor W. Adorno

#44. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

James Madison

#45. 30 or 40 of such voluntary gentlemen would do more in a day than 100 of the rest that must be press'd to it by compulsion.

John Smith

#46. They found records and video-cassettes at their place, a deck of cards, a chess set. In other words, everything that's banned.

Marjane Satrapi

#47. The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

George Orwell

#48. Religiosity that is hostile to sex is the product of authoritarian society.

Wilhelm Reich

#49. Another person's thoughts about you are outside of your jurisdiction; you have no authority.

Bryant McGill

#50. Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxwork displays, film shows, telescreen programs all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked.

George Orwell

#51. The people in charge can always justify doing terrible things in the name of the greater good. A slaughter here, a little torture there. It becomes moral to do things that would be immoral if an ordinary individual did 'em.

Joe Hill

#52. In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear.

Herta Muller

#53. The people have realized that Martial Law is not law. A regime not established by law is devoid of the attribute to dispense law. A regime which puts in a bunker the highest law in the land does not have the moral authority to say that nobody is above the law.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

#54. Pretty soon, I'll be decomposing into phosphorous, calcium, and so on. Who else will you find to tell you the truth? All that's left are the archives. Pieces of paper. And the truth is... I worked at an archive myself, I can tell you first hand: paper lies even more than people do.

Svetlana Alexievich

#55. The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

Glenn Greenwald