Authoritarian Quotes

“If you are for gun control, then you are not against guns, because the guns will be needed to disarm people. So it’s not that you are anti-gun. You’ll need the police’s guns to take away other people’s guns. So you’re very pro-gun; you just believe that only the Government (which is, of course, so reliable, honest, moral and virtuous…) should be allowed to have guns. There is no such thing as gun control. There is only centralizing gun ownership in the hands of a small political elite and their minions.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Socialism is not really an option in the material world. There can be no collective ownership of anything materially scarce. One or another faction will assert control in the name of society. Inevitably, the faction will be the most powerful in society -- that is, the state. This is why all attempts to create socialism in scarce goods or services devolve into totalitarian systems of top-down planning.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“Several psychologists (L. Armstrong, 1994; Enns, McNeilly, Corkery, & Gilbert, 1995; Herman, 1992; McFarlane & van der Kolk, 1996; Pope & Brown, 1996) contend that the controversy of delayed recall for traumatic events is likely to be influenced by sexism. Kristiansen, Gareau, Mittleholt, DeCourville, and Hovdestad (1995) found that people who were more authoritarian and who had less favorable attitudes toward women were less likely to believe in the veracity of women’s recovered memories for sexual abuse. Those who challenged the truthfulness of recovered memories were more likely to endorse negative statements about women, including the idea that battered women enjoy being abused. McFarlane and van der Kolk (1996) have noted that delayed recall in male combat veterans reported by Myers (1940) and Kardiner (1941) did not generate controversy, whereas delayed recall in female survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse has provoked considerable debate.”
― Rachel E. Goldsmith

“She knew only too well that the song was a beautiful lie. As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness. For none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

“This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you; we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic. Every secret service knows this paradox.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“The Constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and the red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and penal code, the liberté, égalité, fraternité and the second of May 1852—all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a magician. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for a moment, in order that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: Everything that exists has this much worth, that it will perish.”
― Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

“Some version of this story has repeated itself throughout the world over the last century. A cast of political outsiders, including Adolf Hitler, Getulio Vargas in Brazil, Alberto Fujimori in Peru, and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, came to power on the same path: from the inside, via elections or alliances with powerful political figures. In each instance, elites believed the invitation to power would contain the outsider, leading to a restoration of control by mainstream politicians. But their plans backfired. A lethal mix of ambition, fear, and miscalculation conspired to lead them to the same fateful mistake: willingly handing over the keys of power to an autocrat-in-the-making.
…
If a charismatic outsider emerges on the scene, gaining popularity as he challenges the old order, it is tempting for establishment politicians who feel their control is unraveling to try to co-opt him. … And then, establishment politicians hope, the insurgent can be redirected to support their own program. This sort of devil’s bargain often mutates to the benefit of the insurgent …”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

“I am not interested in having freedom from burdens.
I don't need any authority to free me from responsibility.
I am not interested in having freedoms within an authoritarian's parameters.
I am only interested in self-determination.
I have only respect for liberty as I am a libertarian.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Democracy can exist only in the countries where people are brave! Coward nations always live under the authoritarian regimes!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Do you understand what I have not said and what you have not heard in this room that does not exist?”
― Yongsoo Park, Boy Genius: A Novel

“Just as in the Trump-Giuliani Ukraine conspiracy, we saw a ruthless, single-minded obsession with staying in power; a manifest lack of moral values, shame, and civility; and a stunning disregard of and disrespect for facts, truth, and expertise.”
― Marie Yovanovitch, Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir

“I’m a nonviolent guy, but the next time some brainwashed Duracell trapped in the Matrix tells you that by curtailing our liberties the authorities are ‘just trying to protect us,’ please do yourself and freedom a favor by sucker-punching them in their lying jaw.”
― Sol Luckman, Musings from a Small Island: Everything under the Sun

“Some clever and honourable nations change their regime from authoritarian to a democratic one, and some weak-kneed dictator lover miserable nations do the exact opposite! Don’t try to look for a character in a person who gave up his freedom, because he does have none!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“The world of today can only be uplifted through positive authoritarianism, not through the so-called democracy. But the point is, whenever you think of authoritarianism or dictatorship, you relate it to tyranny, yet that’s only the negative side of authoritarianism. You never see the true, compassionate leader, as a dictator, because you don’t feel oppressed by him or her.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“The world of today can only be uplifted through positive authoritarianism, not through the so-called democracy. But the point is, whenever you think of authoritarianism or dictatorship, you relate it to tyranny, yet that’s only the negative side of authoritarianism. You never see the true, compassionate leader, as a dictator, because you don’t feel oppressed by him or her. So, it is all about the willingness of the people. When the people willingly give authority to a politician that politician is called a leader, whereas, when that authority is gained by force by a politician, he or she is hailed as a dictator. A father can be either a good, caring and responsible guardian or a drunkard, but a father is not necessarily a drunkard. It is the same with a politician. A politician can be either a good, caring and responsible guardian of his or her society, or a psychological drunkard, but a politician is not necessarily an oppressor. Now the question is - what are you - a leader or a tyrant?”
― Abhijit Naskar

“The mass only follows, regardless of what any naive thinker proclaims, because the mass as I said earlier, is not yet wise enough to take their own decisions. They despise manipulation consciously, yet subconsciously they crave for it. That is why they have so many gods in the first place. They just love the idea of somebody else deciding things for them, and it gives them a kind of comfort.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Harsh as it may sound, the human society needs an authority figure, a guardian figure - be it a glamorous fool, a megalomaniac tyrant or an actual, conscientious, courageous and above all wise leader.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Politics does not make leaders, leaders make right politics.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Collective abdication—the transfer of authority to a leader who threatens democracy—usually flows from one of two sources. The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed. The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls “ideological collusion,” in which the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternatives.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

“When faced with the specter of hundreds of clinicians diagnosing thousands of multiple personality cases in the 1980s-when in the 1970s there were but a few dozen cases, and before that, many years separated individual case reports - skeptics who have not followed the development of the field closely have naturally been suspicious. But instead of following up on their suspicions, many have resorted to authoritarian rhetorical denial... I have overheard grumbling private conversation in my many travels to professional meetings which translate generically into "they are all dupes," referring to clinical researchers in the field.
What, one might ask, does that make of those who have written off the research without reading it?”
― George B. Greaves

“No voice is so loud that it can demand that I listen to it.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Suddenly the despot sees rising up before him, against him, the enemy who brings death - an eye with too steady a look, a mouth with too unfamiliar a smil; each organ is a possible protest.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari

“Authoritarian rule is as good or bad as the ruler himself; Democracy sounds terrific on papers and its advantage is misused by unscrupulous people to the maximum; hence Communism flourished in the name of peoples' equality, but reduced them to a number only!”
― Sandeep Sahajpal, The Twelfth Preamble: To all the authors to be!

“The word could be translated in a number of ways. It could mean self-reliance, autonomy, independence, or responsibility—all the things we weren’t allowed to have. According to the Juche 'philosophy,' 'human beings are the masters of the world, so they get to decide everything.' It suggested we could reorganize the world, hew out a career for ourselves, and be the masters of our destiny. This was laughable, of course, but that’s always the way with totalitarian regimes. Language gets turned on its head. Serfdom is freedom. Repression is liberation. A police state is a democratic republic. And we were 'the masters of our destiny.' And if we begged to differ, we were dead.”
― Masaji Ishikawa

“It´s a populist irony--the strongman comes to power by making impossible and destructive promises to the disenfranchised. Do they actually have any intention of helping these people? Of course not. In fact, they´ll actively stymie any reforms that will actually make the system more fair. All that matters is their iron grip on their ignorant base and the power that comes from it.”
― Ryan Holiday, Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

“The people in Democracies leave everything in the hands of Governments and do nothing about turmoil within that erodes the basic fabric of Democracy, whereas the Governments in the other forms of Governance leave nothing in the hands of their people to seek Democracy. Ironic though.”
― Sandeep Sahajpal, The Twelfth Preamble: To all the authors to be!

“Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make a five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.”
― George Orwell, 1984