George Orwell Quotes

Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.

A police state is a country run by criminals

'Hunger Games' is a tried-and-true tale about a totalitarian society. It's more similar to China than America, but it's also similar to Nazi Germany and anywhere where the populace gets semi-brainwashed into serving the agenda of a very few.

Europeans have sometimes been beguiled by a despotism that comes concealed in the seductive form of an ideal – as it did in the cases of Hitler and Stalin. This fact may remind us that the possibility of despotism is remote neither in space nor in time.

It could be Fascist, religious or political - it's always the same model that operates in these circumstances, and it's that which is the actuality of this film. Therefore, it's not specifically an explanation of German Fascism because that would be an impossible thing to do in any case.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

When state and religion are one, religion becomes a means for the powerful to remain in power.

If you give human beings power over others, their natural tendency is to be fascists.

He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap.

In my view dictators do not surrender. They have to be well and truly defeated.

Laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.

Tyranny is always weakness

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.

You know Kim Jong Un, the evil dictator of North Korea? Apparently, a guy in his inner circle used his ashtray while smoking and Kim Jong Un had him executed. I remember the same thing happened when a guy used Martha Stewart's personal lemon zester.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

Fascism may be good at making the trains run on time, but you wouldn't like some of the destinations.

The face of tyranny Is always mild at first.

The Communist Party apparatus was the most gigantic mafia the world has ever known.

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.

It didn't take long for the world to realize that the Shah was an enlightened liberal next to the bloody reactionary regime that followed, and which executed more people in three months than the Shah had done in 30 years.

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

If I were dictator, I'd have a catch-all crime of disrespect.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.