Patrick McGoohan Quotes

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

Man and fascism cannot co-exist. If fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.

The limits of tyrants are proscribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.

In an over-organized society, the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul.

I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny.

Against the loneliness and rootlessness of man in a free society, totalitarianism promises the comradeship of crusading unity.

When an American government takes on characteristics that elevate the state above the individual, it must be vigorously opposed as a form of, or step toward, tyranny.

I will not let a political party tell me how to live, when to die or what to believe in. Our souls are linked to the universe, but we can never see heaven, because our flesh ties us to the earth and the people around us. But when the people around you have lost their will to be free, then earth becomes a hell.

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it.

Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

Long live freedom and damn the ideologies.

Any kind of dictatorship, I'm uneasy. I just don't like dictators. I don't like crowds. I don't like hordes, and I don't like other people telling me what to do. This is probably a reaction against people telling me what to do when I was a kid. I won't join any group, espouse a cause against some other people.

Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary, its victory is assured.

None of the evils which totalitarianism ... claims to remedy is worse than totalitarianism itself.

I admit that what you have just heard might be for the welfare of the country, were it not that the presence of despotism are always dangerous.

The best hope to smash Fascism in the world.

I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

Within the Russian system, everything depends on the character of those few who hold full power in their hands. The position of the individual within present-day Russia has been described as follows: far-reaching economic security by sacrificing personal liberty.