Gore Vidal Quotes

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

How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

This bill reminds me of the tactics of the former Soviet Union - and we know how successful that was.

Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. We have built up the most gigantic police apparatus, with informers made a national institution, and the most refined scientific system of political and mental torture. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can.

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick.

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

Our politicians want to keep us in a negative state because they can easily manipulate us.

The North Korean regime really can control people. I think they are the best dictator in the whole planet.

If you've lived in a dictatorship for thirty years, you're used to people lying to you.

The continual manufacture of enemies is essential to the growth of the fascist state.

Every Superstate has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and the truth is a menace.

It could be Fascist, religious or political - it's always the same model that operates in these circumstances, and it's that which is the actuality of this film. Therefore, it's not specifically an explanation of German Fascism because that would be an impossible thing to do in any case.

If Big Brother (of Orwell's 1984) comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omnipresent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed.

It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false.

Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

'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.

As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board.

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.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.

But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer.

For many, the recent disclosure of massive warrantless surveillance programs of all citizens by the Obama administration has brought back memories of George Orwell's '1984.' Another Orwell book seems more apt as the White House and its allies try to contain the scandal: 'Animal Farm.'

I wanted to analyse and understand how the Chinese people could have their lives so crushed by fear.

When applied to politics and taken to its extreme, kitsch is the mask of death. Fascism was all aesthetics. There was no core principle to it. There was no truth to it.