Totalitarian Government Quotes

It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian government in our century that they don't permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic martyr's death for their convictions. ~ Hannah Arendt

What we call isolation in the political sphere, is called loneliness in the sphere of social intercourse.Isolation and loneliness are not the same"...."While isolation concerns only the political realm of life, loneliness concerns life as a whole. Totalitarian government, like all tyrannies, certainly could not exist without destroying the public realm of life, that is, without destroying, by isolating men, their political capacities.But totalitarian domination as a form of government is not content with this isolation and destroys private life as well. it bases its self on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is the most radical and desperate experiences of man ~ Hannah Arendt

I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government. ~ Salman Rushdie

What the (totalitarian) government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of the nuisance that people generally won't bother. ~ James M. Fallows

Hunger Games and A New Hope: Hero rises up from the poorest place in the galaxy. Put through some challenges. Finds romance and a side-kick. Somebody dies. Check
Catching Fire and Empire Strikes Back: Totalitarian government strikes back, some other people die, and the rebellion starts gaining momentun.
Mockingjay/Return of the Jedi: Bunch of minor characters die, and then one major one. Rebellion wins, if in an unexpected way. Characters all get married.
I think Suzanne Collins has some explaining to do. ~ Caleb Eversole

...the consequences of this shift of emphasis from the police to the military in the power game were of great consequence. It is true, ascendancy of the secret police over the military apparatus is the hallmark of many tyrannies, and not only the totalitarian; however, in the case of totalitarian government the preponderance of the police not merely answers the need for suppressing the population at home but fits the ideological claim to global rule. For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence and will rule conquered territory with police methods and personnel rather than with the army. Thus, the Nazis used their SS troops, essentially a police force, for the rule and even the conquest of foreign territories, with the ultimate aim of an amalgamation of the army and the police under the leadership of the SS. ~ Hannah Arendt

Using the market to gradually fix a totalitarian government is like making a pot of tea by running a volcano through a glacier. ~ Clay Shirky

In fact, after living in Communist China for so many years, I realized that one of the advantages enjoyed by a democratic government that allows freedom of speech is that the government knows exactly who supports it and who is against it, while a totalitarian government knows nothing of what the people really think.
~pg 55 ~ Nien Cheng

The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them. And one can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureau-cracy truly is ... .we have become very much accustomed by modern psychology and sociology, not to speak of modern bureaucracy, to explaining away the responsibility of the doer for his deed in terms of this or that kind of determinism. ~ Hannah Arendt

I love talking about Kennedy assassination ... a great archetypal example of how totalitarian government ... sorry, wrong meeting. ~ Bill Hicks

It is horrible how people will use anything as a political monkey wrench and to hell with the country. (Julia Child to Avis DeVoto) ~ Joan Reardon

I believe that there is a moral and constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality ... In my mind, government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice. ~ Clarence Thomas

Think of the following event: A collection of hieratic persons (from Harvard or some such place) lecture birds on how to fly. Imagine bald males in their sixties, dressed in black robes, officiating in a form of English that is full of jargon, with equations here and there for good measure. The bird flies. Wonderful confirmation! They rush to the department of ornithology to write books, articles, and reports stating that the bird has obeyed them, an impeccable causal inference. The Harvard Department of Ornithology is now indispensable for bird flying. It will get government research funds for its contribution. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you need to put your money in a safe and secure place and you want it to earn interest, Treasury bonds are safer than putting it in any bank as a deposit or putting it anywhere else, because they are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government. ~ Jim Cooper

It is not clear to anyone, least of all the practitioners, how science and technology in their headlong course do or should influence ethics and law, education and government, art and social philosophy, religion and the life of the affections. Yet science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history. ~ Jacques Barzun

Every Indian outbreak that I have ever known has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the government. ~ Buffalo Bill

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may. ~ Daniel Webster

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression. ~ Noam Chomsky

Aid can work where there is good governance, and usually fails where governments are unable or unwilling to commit aid to improve the lives of their people. ~ Lee H. Hamilton

Bless his heart, I have respect for Mitt Romney, but I do not have respect for what he has done through this debt increase debate. He waited until it was a done deal that we would increase the debt ceiling and more money would be spent, more money would be borrowed and spent on bigger government, and then he came out and made a statement that he didn't like the deal after all. You can't defer an issue and assume that the problem is then going to be avoided. ~ Sarah Palin

If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves. ~ Auberon Herbert

Billie didn't blame Anslinger's agents as individuals; she blamed the drug war itself247 - because it forced the police to treat ill people like criminals. "Imagine if the government chased sick people248 with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldn't treat them," she wrote in her memoir, "then sent them to jail. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs." Still, ~ Johann Hari

When corporations get special handouts from the government, subsidies and tax breaks, it costs you. It means you have to pay more in taxes to make up for these hidden expenses, and government has less money for good schools and roads, Medicare and national defense and everything else you need. ~ Robert Reich

The passage of fourteen years had led to another significant change in the international environment. As I told Bush 43 and Condi Rice on more than one occasion, when I had been in government before, problems or crises more often than not would arise, be dealt with, and go away. The Yom Kippur War in October 1973, a serious crisis that risked confrontation with the Soviet Union, was over in a few days. Even the Iranian hostage crisis, as painful and protracted as it was, ended in 444 days. Now hardly any issue or problem could be resolved and put aside; instead problems accumulated. ~ Robert M. Gates

Prohibition ... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes ... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. ~ Abraham Lincoln

When has the government ever told anyone the truth? ~ Philip K. Dick

Disparities in economic standing drive radical differences in Americans' values, causing a pronounced and antagonistic political ideologically. Americans are progressively viewing members of the domestic opposition party as the greatest threat to their wellbeing. Instead of fearing a war overseas, Americans are increasing distrustful of other Americans. A great American cultural war between the rich and poor is inevitable, unless corporate America and its wealthiest citizens voluntary commence accepting a larger load of taxation and the government implements dramatic steps to shore up the disparity that continues to widen between the people on contrasting economic poles. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The real struggle between an American government and the people was one of power, which was settled when they designed their Constitution, which conceded the sovereignty of the people when it came to politics, and the sovereignty of the consumer when it came to economics. ~ Ndabaningi Sithole

There's nothing more political than sex. The church has had its hand on our crotch for more than 2,000 years, and the government is moving in that direction. ~ Larry Flynt

Socialism isn't just a list of economic prescriptions for government. Perhaps above all, socialism is a moral view. ~ Anderson Cooper

The Tea Party folks may be sincere, loyal citizens, but their notions about how the economy works are exactly that: mere notions. Their core notion is that government needs to do nothing more than get out of the way of business in order for the economy to boom and bloom. ~ David Horsey

The real issue, as far as Democrats are concerned, is the number of people receiving something from the government. This is exactly what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had in mind when he created this monster. And Clinton is planning to expand it beyond Roosevelt's wildest dreams. ~ Rush Limbaugh

It is easy to know when a government wishes for peace by observing the character of the person sent to negotiate for it. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

When Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, I was thrilled to learn that the federal government would offer resources to all states to assist them in enhancing the voting process in America. ~ DeForest Soaries

Our government is operating within an unprecedented revenue shortfall and that we have an obligation to all citizens of the province to manage our finances responsibly. And that's what we're going to do. ~ Rachel Notley

A woman with her two children was captured on the steps of the capitol building, whither she had fled for protection, and this, too, while the stars and stripes floated over it. ~ Jane Swisshelm

The government has become a mechanism for distributing largess, and your census form is your ticket. ~ Tom G. Palmer

High tax rates that people don't actually pay do not bring the government as much revenue as lower tax rates that they do pay. ~ Thomas Sowell

Well, you know, I - again, even in the context of BP, I wonder about this government's priorities. The federal government's top priority right now should be the cleanup. And BP certainly has done so many things wrong. They need to be held to account. ~ Carly Fiorina

But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticize the government. Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God. That fact is written all across human history; but it is written most plainly across the recent history of Russia; which was created by Lenin. There the government is the God, and all the more the God, because it proclaims aloud in accents of thunder ... one essential commandment, Thou shalt have no other gods but Me. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

In my judgment, while it is the duty of Congress to respect to the uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen ... not any ecclesiastical organization can be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the national government. ~ James A. Garfield

I think the best thing we can do is sell that idea of smaller government - of fiscal responsibility vs. the Obama record. Obama made promises, and on every promise in which he's actually delivered, things have gotten worse instead of better. He said if we get ObamaCare it'll help, but health care prices went up. ~ Richard Mourdock