Tom Stoppard Quotes

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

Literature has its own life, even in a dictatorship like the Soviet Union.

Africa has more dictators per capita than any other continent.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he will come after you. This is equally true of Sovietism, of China and of Iran, and in our time it has happened a lot in Islam. The point is that it's worse when the authoritarianism is supported by something supernatural.

I grew up under a dictatorship. I knew what it meant for people to not have the ability to freely express themselves.

When demagogues and dictators ban art, this is the reason: art is the great solvent of obedient fundamentalism.

In the Franco era, we couldn't defend our ideas.

If you exile a writer, however free the country he is sent to, there will always be a sense of internal constraint.

There were no dissidents then in the USSR because they were all killed.

The Soviet Union was a one-party state. In such states, enemies of the party become enemies of the state, and the state can punish with full weight of prosecution.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

I grew up in a dictatorship in East Africa.

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable.

The principle of evil in Europe is the enervating spirit of Russian absolutism.

I lived in a dictatorship in Brazil, and I was arrested three times. I felt in my flesh what it is to live under such a regime and experience deprivation of freedom.

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.

Ideas are dangerous; and the traffic in them has been the concern of all dictators.

Political or religious dissenters are the plague of every totalitarian regime.

In domestic as in political tyranny, the case of absolute monsters chiefly illustrates the institution by showing that there is scarcely any horror which may not occur under it if the despot pleases

The poisoning of the civil discourse always accompanies totalitarian movements.

They didn't begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?

With the suppression of all political parties, the bases were laid for the totalitarian state.

Authoritarianism is the principle determinant of intollerance.

Since he took power over half a century ago, Fidel Castro proved to be a brutal dictator who must always be remembered by his gross abuses of human rights, systemic exploitation of Cubans, unrelenting repression, and stifling censorship upon his own people.