Mark Helprin Quotes

Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao's China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.

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

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.

You agreed with the Dear Leader or you died or ended up in Camp 913.

Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.

To build a country, [Joseph] Stalin was obliged to use force and kill. Mao Tse-tung was obliged to use force and kill. To mention only two recent cases, without raking over the whole history of the world.

...any form of government that required the repression, imprisonment, and execution of those who disagreed with it was certainly not a government of the people.

The statues of Lenin and Stalin are down, but the fight against their ghosts seems harder.

Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.

Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.

When it comes to tyrants, dictators and terrorists, strength and the threat of force is the only language they understand.

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

Most Hungarians know what it was to live in a dictatorship; some are old enough to have known both fascism and communism. No one wants to go back to that.

I've always been fascinated by totalitarian regimes. I'm not an admirer of them.

This power, this authority, Soviet power: they killed everybody who could make any resistance, who could explain his own way of thinking and who could follow his own way of thinking, of believing.

Socialism is communism without the firing squad.

Sasha, aren’t you a good communist? How can you allow so much ideological freedom? Do something!.

There have been … totalitarian forces in our lifetime: The totalitarianism of fascism and now of capitalism.

Nowadays, we seldom remember that the totalitarianism that emerged early this century was thought to embody, above all, modernity and technology.

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.

The Fascists kill because they cannot argue.

.. jack-booted government thugs.

Our action will have to be very violent in order to crush a strong and well-organized enemy [the Republicans] as soon as possible. Hence, all leaders of political parties, societies or unions not pledged to our movement will be imprisoned. Such people will be administered exemplary punishment [usually shot] so that movements of rebellion or strikes will be strangles.

The guilt of Stalin and his immediate entourage before the Party and the people for the mass repressions and lawlessness they committed is enormous and unforgivable.

Rule with an iron first will inevitably come to an end.