Azar Nafisi Quotes

One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly and wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

Either you were opposed to the growth of Fascism and went out to fight against it, or you acquiesced in its crimes and permitted its growth.

… the tools of despotism and corruption

Those who exercise power always arrange matters so as to give their tyranny the appearance of justice.

Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.

You see, control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...like junk.

The passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind, and is always sure of finding new and unforseen allies in continuing its martyrology.

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.

Narrow minds can develop as well through persecution as through benevolence; they can assure themselves of their power by tyrannizing cruelly or beneficially over others.

How is it possible to live in world where people can rule millions of others? It's incredible! It's like we've gone back to the 12th century. That's what happens when you decapitate intelligentsia and repeatedly traumatize and brutalize a country for decades on end: you do not get virtue. Victims do not make nice people.

Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things - once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

One hopes that they'll never be able to use mind control weapons, because we're all done for if that happens. I don't want military people, or political people, to have that type of power over those of us who just get by from day to day.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

Tyrannies not only want to control your mind and thoughts but your flesh as well.

Government by blackmail is incompatible with democracy.

Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world.