Simon Sebag Montefiore Quotes

I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.

In the Soviet Union, you always have the feeling someone is watching you.

Inside North Korea, we have many informants and spies watching everyone; they're paid by the government. Even a husband and wife can't trust each other.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything.

I'd never been in a police state. I didn't know what it was. I knew that it was, in the general way that people know that two and two is four, but it had no emotional value for me until I found myself in the middle of it.

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

A functioning police state needs no police.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

God help that country by informers led Where fear corrupts and where suspicions spread By looks and gestures, even to the dead.

The people are so secure under the sultan's reign that no one fears his agents.

No socialist system can be formed without some form of political police – a Gestapo

A totalitarian state will harmonize in Spain the operation of all the capabilities and energy in the country

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists.

In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.

Putin has all the power under his control, all the security forces, all the billions of dollars he needs. It's mad to pretend otherwise.

In 1933, the Gestapo was founded to become - to be a secret police agency to keep tabs on political opposition and so forth. Brand-new as of April 1933.

The machine of repression can only be started, it can't be stopped - even by Putin.

Mr. Putin presents himself as a czar - and like any czar, he fears revolution above all else.

What Trump is not smart enough to even grasp is that the kind of popularity that Putin has can only be achieved in the context of retro-totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism is not about some state that appears out of nowhere and suddenly is all-powerful. There can't be any such thing. Totalitarianism starts when the difference between your public life and your private life is effaced.

Were we ever to find ourselves living under a totalitarian regime, place no faith in the mercy of your fellow citizens.

Kindness towards strangers is rare in North Korea. There is a risk to helping others. The state made accusers and informers of us all.

Dictatorship is a constant lecture instructing you that your feelings, your thoughts and desires are of no account, that you are a nobody and must live as you are told by other people who desire and think for you

There will be no more protests. No more dissension. No more violence. There will be only one voice. The voice of Ravinia. The voice of Halla. Your voice." "There goes freedom of speech," I said.