Dario Fo Quotes

Sarcasm all around the world is always against right wing and against people in power. That's the definition of political sarcasm.

There was a joke in Czechoslovakia: The Communist Party dance, it's one step forward, two steps backward, and everyone is still clapping.

Power is being able to affect the hegemony of existing systems.

A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom—he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

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.

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you don't have a regime.

Whenever anyone challenges anything, the powers that be try to paint them as extremists or radicals or whatever. And I think that's actually nonsense.

Authoritarian systems evolve. Authoritarianism in the Internet Age is not your old Cold War authoritarianism.

One of the main ways that leadership stays in power is by, in various ways, convincing people that they should just let those who are in government govern: 'Trust us. Trust me. Just let us take care of things. Stay out of it.' Your opinions don't really matter. You are isolated. You are insignificant.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

Power doesn't just exist. It is threaded through different mechanisms of control. I'm interested in those complexities. But I want to address that in very forthright language and sometimes with images.

A functioning police state needs no police.

People in power need to control others in order to maintain power. One of the ways to do that is to take that which is threatening and demonize it.

Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.

Dictators are as scared of books as they are of cannon.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

Between the people and their enemies there can be nothing in common but the sword; we must govern by iron those who cannot be governed by justice; we must oppress the tyrant...

The silence of peoples is something kings should study.

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four.

Those who fear men like laws.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power. You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people's souls and thoughts.

Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.