Jacques Prevert Quotes

Totalitarianism is not about some state that appears out of nowhere and suddenly is all-powerful. There can't be any such thing. Totalitarianism starts when the difference between your public life and your private life is effaced.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship.

The Thought Police: To censor and protect.

A functioning police state needs no police.

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.

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

Surveillance breeds conformity.

As long as the people don't fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn't stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful... but so frightening.

I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.

All that is needed to set us definitely on the road to a Fascist society is war. It will of course be a modified form of Fascism at first.

In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything.

'1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under different names.

The trend in China is toward tighter and tighter control. They are basically improving their censorship mechanisms.

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

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.

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of it's powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.

Today, my freedom as a poet is taken by a censor; tomorrow, my freedom as a citizen will be taken by a policeman. Today I am banished from the theater; tomorrow, I shall be banished from the land. Today, I am gagged; tomorrow, I shall be deported. Today a state of siege exists in literature; tomorrow, it will exist in the city.

It was only a generation ago that we learned that the burning of books may precede the burning of people.

We have a free society, and the totalitarian states are dungeons. We have totally different methods of population control…. We can’t control people so we have to control what they think.

In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own.... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

In the Soviet Union, you always have the feeling someone is watching you.

Political dictatorships take possession not just of money and belongings but of narrative.

A government that cannot survive truth and must resort to stamping out truth is not a government that any country wants.