Muriel Spark Quotes

We will not sit at the same table with the communists. I will never talk to them

The final conflict will be between the Communists and the ex-Communists.

The term Party is applied equally to the peaceful parties of America and to the Communist Party of Russia, the Nazi Party of Germany, and the Fascist Party of Italy. The methodology of these parties varies, but their fundamental objective-to place and keep their leaders in control of the government - is the same.

What if you are a conservative in a liberal environment? Then what you are conserving is liberalism.

I think that contradictions, unless they're understood, unless they're analyzed, unless they're thoughtfully probed, unless people have a sense of what those contradictions mean - there's just as much of a chance that they'll move into embracing fascism as there is that they'll move into a more radical conception of democracy itself.

The struggle between the two worlds [Fascism and Democracy] can permit no compromises. The new cycle which begins with the ninth year of the Fascist regime places the alternative in even greater relief either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!

The division of Whig and Tory... is the most salutary of all divisions and ought, therefore, to be fostered instead of being amalgamated; for take away this, and some more dangerous principle of division will take its place.

It's not those punks in the street [left wing radicals] that worry me, it's the right wing. That's the real beast if it ever gets unleashed.

In New York, the opposite of a Democrat is not a Republican; it’s a Fascist.

With the unwitting help of our modern Liberal leadership, Communism has now taken all but complete control of mankind.

The Fascists kill because they cannot argue.

In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism the latter adversary will, without question, win and will control the world. The era of democracy is finished and the democratic system bankrupt. There is not room in the world for two different systems or for two different economies.

Historians of the future will examine how and why, the end disappearing behind the means, the Communists spirit ceased to be opposed to the Fascist spirit, and even to be differentiated from it.

Either you were opposed to the growth of Fascism and went out to fight against it, or you acquiesced in its crimes and permitted its growth.

When Europe was dominated by the two Black Birds of Fascism and Stalinism most European political leaders thought that you had to be for one and against the other, when the important thing was to be against both of these.

There is a generation or two of intelligent people … Then comes a political catastrophe, and we have to begin all over again. We are so deeply divided between Catholics and liberals, right wing and left, that one-half can never profit by the knowledge and achievements of the other.

We do not recognize the Communist regime on the mainland. We consider them bandits.

The German is naturally a law-abiding man, and he had a glimpse into the abyss when Communism in Germany raised its head—and Communism was a creed of violence. It was beaten ultimately by another creed of violence and force [Nazism].

All the people who might oppose the regime have been absolutely silenced. The central idea behind it is to make the rising generation worship their chief and get ready to "save civilization" from the Jews, from Communism and from democracy -- thus preparing the way for a Nazified world where all freedom of the individual, of education, and of the churches is to be totally suppressed.

Nobody can ask us to abjure our fascist roots.

As an American, I condemn a Republican "Fascist" just as much as I condemn a Democrat "Communist." I condemn a Democrat "Fascist" just as much as I condemn a Republican "Communist." They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.

An extreme reflection of the dangers confronting modern social development is the growth of racism, nationalism, and militarism and, in particular, the rise of demagogic, hypocritical, and monstrously cruel dictatorial police regimes…. These tragic developments have always derived from the struggle of egotistical and group interests, the struggle for unlimited power, suppression of intellectual freedom, a spread of intellectually simplified, narrow-minded mass myths.

The current attitude is pretty much the attitude we had in the CIA during the 1950s. When we analysed the operational climate and all the political forces in any given country, we had our friends and we had our enemies. There was no one in between. The friends were centre and Right wing social democrats, conservatives, liberals, in some cases all the way over to neo-fascists. The enemies were Left wing social democrats, socialists, Communists, all the way to those advocating armed struggle.

I’m not going to let the Communists take this government, and they’re doing it right now.

I have always had one answer for Communists--kill them all.