Roland Barthes Quotes

The National Socialist Party will prevent in the future, by force if necessary, all meetings and lectures which are likely to exercise a depressing influence on the German state.

Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

Russia is classic fascism.

Benito Mussolini created the word 'fascism.' He defined it as 'the merging of the state and the corporation.' He also said a more accurate word would be 'corporatism.' This was the definition in Webster's up until 1987 when a corporation bought Webster's and changed it to exclude any mention of corporations.

All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce obedience by prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their power. The swastika is only one example of many in recent history.

Spend most of the day reading fascisti pamphlets. They certainly have turned the whole country into an army. From cradle to grave one is cast in the mould of fascismo and there can be no escape…. It is certainly a socialist experiment in that it destroys individuality. It also destroys liberty.

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.

If you know anything, deny, deny, deny. I want to save Fascism.

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

Speech has never defeated fascism.

In their efforts to discredit human freedom, the Putinites denounce the sins that may occur under the reign of liberty with the same ardor, the same sincerity, and the same purpose that animated their Soviet forebears.

Even painless research is fascism, supremacism...

In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

I have read somewhere that in a totalitarian system martyrdom does better than thought.

Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile.

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.

I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

The real evil of the Russian communist state is not communism. It is the secret police and the concentration camp.

All that is needed to set us definitely on the road to a Fascist society is war. It will of course be a modified form of Fascism at first.

We've come into the world of '1984,' but it turns out to be '1984'-Lite.