Masha Gessen Quotes

The tyranny of Communism is as old as the Pharaohs and the Pyramids - that the State stands above all men and their individual aspirations.

Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.

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

Our age has seen the birth of totalitarian systems and forms of tyranny which would not have been possible in the time before the technological leap forward.

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

… we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

With the suppression of all political parties, the bases were laid for the totalitarian state.

The machine of repression can only be started, it can't be stopped - even by Putin.

A totalitarian power is mainly busy in keeping itself alive.

I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.

Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.

Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.

He loved Big Brother.

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want.

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

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.

'Hunger Games' is a tried-and-true tale about a totalitarian society. It's more similar to China than America, but it's also similar to Nazi Germany and anywhere where the populace gets semi-brainwashed into serving the agenda of a very few.

Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

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

Dystopian novels, such as Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' often tend to site their despotised or deformed civilisations in urban environments.

Literature has its own life, even in a dictatorship like the Soviet Union.

Hitler had a police state of the first order. And those who showed any sign of being weak-kneed faced prison or often summary execution. That prevented a lot of people who knew that the war was not going to turn out well for Germany from giving up.

For 73 years a totalitarian regime ruled the country. Totalitarian regime.

You can't become a dictator through checks and balances.