Paul Johnson Quotes

The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear.

Fear works. It is more effective than any drug, tactic, or torture device.

You agreed with the Dear Leader or you died or ended up in Camp 913.

Part of the reason that the government's fear mongering is succeeding is because so many people are so ignorant, that it is easier for government to frighten people in submission.

Every conceivable cruel method of blackmail was used against me to obtain by force and at all costs confessions and statements both about comrades who had been arrested, and about political activities.

Horror and panic themselves are forms of violence, and diminishing them, restricting their dimensions, is itself a civilizing act.

Sometimes fear is used as a way to control.

Intimidation doesn't last very long.

Torture is a very humiliating experience. The goal is not to obtain information but to punish and break you so that you won't do anything against the authorities. You are made an example to others so that they will be too terrified to do anything either.

A culture of intimidation has no justification in any administration.

Power manipulates the innocent and terror is born.

Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen.

Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.

The people who have the power want you scared. They want you walking around paralyzed by the notion that you could die at any moment.

If you've lived in a dictatorship for thirty years, you're used to people lying to you.

they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.

Let people hate you so long as they fear you.

The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain -- the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn.

The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason is terror and force.

When the imagination is continually led to the brink of vice by a system of terror and denunciations, people fling themselves over the precipice from the mere dread of falling.

In any case, it's the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves!

This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don't want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate.

Make your enemy afraid, for it is impossible to remain quiet about their moral offences.

A terrorist network that believes a nation so tested will fold under pressure of a few horrific acts may capture its attention, but will not achieve its submission.

Every terrorist regime in the world uses isolation to break people's spirits.