Cory Booker Quotes

I'm not comparing Bush to Adolf Hitler - because George Bush, for one thing, is not as smart as Adolf Hitler.

A dictator ... must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument — the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American

Demagoguery is not unknown in American history.

He thought of men like Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon. All it took was a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power and then fall under their spell.

Nostalgia for dead tyrants and the longing for heroes are unhealthy, and they can result in the deification of a Saddam as easily as a Havel or Mandela.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.

It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

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

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

You look at the greatest villains in human history, the fascists, the autocrats, they all wanted people to kneel before them because they don't love themselves enough.

We tend to think about fascism in terms of the Second World War.

But Fascism cannot continue in a modified form.

When applied to politics and taken to its extreme, kitsch is the mask of death. Fascism was all aesthetics. There was no core principle to it. There was no truth to it.

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

If you read about Mussolini or Stalin or some of these other great monsters of history, they were at it all the time, that they were getting up in the morning very early. They were physically very active. They didn't eat lunch.

I've met quite a few dictators up close and personal in my life.

Frankly, I wouldn't put anything past him [Nixon] and those damn technocrats. You can't begin to compete with the professional Nixonites when it comes to deception.... If Nixon told them to nationalize the railroads, they'd have nationalized the railroads. If he'd told them to exterminate the Jews, they'd have exterminated the Jews.

I hate to say it but I was glad when they shot him. I don’t believe in terrorism or assassination but he could have become the American dictator.

Tyrants of our day are the most dangerous preachers of liberty.

You can't be a dictator any more; anyone who tries to play the part of God will stumble.

Demagogues are the mob's lackeys.

Naturally the common people don't want war ... but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.