John Lindsay Quotes

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

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

In most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny.

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.

I'm tired of living in a police state.

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.

... a step in the direction of tyranny.

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

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

He [Rafael Trujillo] had his torture chambers. He had his political assassinations. But he kept law and order, cleaned the place up, made it sanitary, built public works, and he didn’t bother the United States. So that was fine with us.

… the mortal enemy of liberty

I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control.

Fear is a dangerous thing. Once it is sanctioned by the state there is no telling where it might lead. It is always a short path to walk from being suspicious of our fellow citizens to taking actions to restrict their liberty.

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.

No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine

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

Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.

Kim Jong-un's style is more suggestive of Saddam Hussein or his murderous son, Uday Hussein.

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

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

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 more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

If I were dictator, I'd have a catch-all crime of disrespect.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

Many a time freedom has been rolled back - and always for the same sorry reason: fear.