Giorgio Agamben Quotes

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

The tyranny of Communism is as old as the Pharaohs and the Pyramids - that the State stands above all men and their individual aspirations.

When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.

They [the Soviets] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth; they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

There is fascism, leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol, into smartness and yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war. It means change without hope. Our immediate duty - in that tinkering which is the only useful form of action in our leaky old tub - our immediate duty is to stop it.

Right now, we have no possibility of politics because we have a one-party state.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

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

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.

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

Extensive and organized power over large populations does not suffice to make a nation

Even the most repressive regimes seek to maintain the fiction that they have the people’s interest at heart.

No socialist system can be formed without some form of political police – a Gestapo

A totalitarian state will harmonize in Spain the operation of all the capabilities and energy in the country

Maintaining legitimacy in an authoritarian state is very difficult.

Either the USSR was not the country of socialism, in which case socialism didn't exist anywhere and doubtless, wasn't possible: or else, socialism was that, this abominable monster, this police state, the power of beasts of prey.

At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power..

The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.

In communism, we never had any freedom - of movement, of speech, of press. We didn't even make own decisions for our lives, our future. We were human robots.

When totalitarian regimes are established, they at least have the illusion of the single-minded purpose. But once they establish the stature that's necessary for a totalitarian regime, they tend to flail.

Communist regimes were not some unfortunate aberration, some historical deviation from a socialist ideal. They were the ultimate expression, unconstrained by democratic and electoral pressures, of what socialism is all about. ... In short, the state [is] everything and the individual nothing.

It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of human history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens.

Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.

Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to prosecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.