Natan Sharansky Quotes

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

The price of freedom is less than the cost of repression.

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy's enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

Were we ever to find ourselves living under a totalitarian regime, place no faith in the mercy of your fellow citizens.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party - though they are quite numerous - is no freedom at all.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism –-- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

Authoritarianism provides a kind of negative stability. Democracy creates space to do a lot of things, sometimes bad things, dangerous things.

Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

... timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.

A global government would almost by definition abusive. As someone who escaped from Communist government, how would I escape from global government.

The era of individualism, liberalism and democracy, of humanitarianism and freedom, is nearing its end. The masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them. Life will descend to a level of general uniformity, a new kind of primitivism, and the world will be better for it.....

No truly sophisticated proponent of repression would be stupid enough to shatter the facade of democratic institutions.

A totalitarian society makes enormous demands on the courage of men, and a partially totalitarian society makes even greater demands because the general anxiety is greater.

An oppressive government is worse than a man-eating tiger.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

There's nothing to fear. I'm not a dictator.

Our city finds itself in an uncomfortable place: on the frontline between freedom and auto_cracy.

Churchill knew instinctively what was wrong with communism - that it repressed liberty; that it replaced individual discretion with state control; that it entailed the curtailment of democracy, and therefore that it was tyrannous.

Without democracy freedom is a chimera

Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.