Michael Paterniti Quotes

I think the Catalonian people really identify with Barcelona - the fans are really proud of the team and the club.

I am and feel Catalan.

I think, for Catalonia, FC Barcelona means a lot because it is one of the top clubs in the world, and that means that it's a way to show what Catalonia is in the world.

The news of the open military help to Franco from Hitler and Mussolini, and the heroic resistance of the people of Madrid, Barcelona and the big cities fired a widespread wish to help the Republic and its people.

It is alleged that half a million Spanish men, women and children fled to France after the Franco victory.

As a Catholic priest, I state that no worse outrage could be inflicted on religion than the Te Deum to be sung to the glory of [Spanish Dictator] Franco in the church at Guernica …

Francisco Franco’s military uprising against Spain’s elected government was an attempt, not so much to impose Fascism as to restore feudalism.

With Rajoy, there is a taboo topic, which is the aspiration of Catalonia to decide its future.

You can read it in history books now, but they often suppress the fact that the U.S. government tolerated [Nazi]. It's really remarkable because they claim that [Franklin] Roosevelt was impeded by the Neutrality Act. On the other hand, he bitterly condemned a Mexican businessman for sending several guns to the Republic. If you look back, oil was the one commodity that [Francisco] Franco could not receive from the Germans and the Italians, so that was quite significant.

[Francisco Franco] said they should resort to guerrilla war. Which has a history in Spain.

We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.

This is naturally the most important thing, the dark traces left by the era of totalitarianism in the human mind, where is - are difficult to do away with. And this is a very demanding job.

A law is always that much more scary and that much more effective for a totalitarian state if it's selectively enforced.

That worst evil of long dictatorships: the loss of all political experience.

Joseph Stalin is a titan of thought. His name is to be given to an entire century.

For the first stage of his dictatorship, Vladimir Putin was involved in destroying public space. On the first day he was in office, he introduced legislation that reformed and over five years effectively dismantled the electoral system. So anything that passes for elections in Russia today has nothing to do with actual elections.

Societies held together by fear and repression may offer the illusion of stability for a time, but they are built upon fault lines that will eventually tear asunder.

No one is ever better off with dictators but there comes a time you know, when you're on an airplane, they always say, "in case of an emergency oxygen masks will drop down. Put yours on first and then administer help to your neighbor." We need oxygen right now.

Once a ruler becomes religious, it becomes impossible for you to debate with him. Once someone rules in the name of religion, your lives become hell.

The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.

We're nowhere near democracy. I've been released, that's all.

Joseph McCarthy, the Junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin, ruled America like devil king for four years. His purges were an American mirror image of Stalin's purges, an unnoticed similarity.

Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.

By contrast, China is a repressive regime that denies its citizens the essential freedoms of religion, political dissent and representative self-government.

In any totalitarian society, dissent is viewed as a threat, civic literacy is denounced, and those public spheres that produce engage citizens are dismantled or impoverished through the substitution of training for education.