Merab Mamardashvili Quotes

Since Castro took power, the Cuban people have been denied basic human freedoms. No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no political freedom. And the regime uses brutality and violence to suppress these freedoms and impose its will.

In general, literature is a natural adversary of totalitarianism. Tyrannical governments all view literature in the same way: as their enemy. I lived for a long time in a totalitarian state, and I know firsthand that horror.

Communism feeds on aggression, hatred, and the imprisonment of men's minds and souls. This shall not take root in the United States.

… the inhuman communist police state tyranny

I grew up in a dictatorship in a very Catholic country.

In Iraq during the days of Saddam, I had a government minder who followed me everywhere, reported on my activities.

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

Despotism is a long crime.

The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

I'd never been in a police state. I didn't know what it was. I knew that it was, in the general way that people know that two and two is four, but it had no emotional value for me until I found myself in the middle of it.

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

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.

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

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.

Totalitarianism liquidates its internal enemies or smashes opposition as soon as it arises; it uses methods that are simple and infallible because they are undemocratic. But democracy can defend itself from within only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy.

Civic murder … This free republic has killed five men for their opinions.

Communism of every type and stripe brings with it an ideological straight jacket. Thought control, brain-washing, censorship, imprisonment, exile, mental and physical torture are the indispensable weapons of Communist rule.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

Germany is a despotism, with mock constitutionalism. There is the dictature of capitalism represented by junkerdom, militarism, and police. All independent organizations of working men were forbidden.

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

Terror is trump. Common, brutal suppression methods are considered as sanctified laws.

Fig leaves of democratic procedure … hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship

Every dictatorship creates thousands of smaller dictators who live on for decades.

Stalin's methods did not help.