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Quotes About Totalitarianism

There are many quotes about totalitarianism which are memorable, both from the tyrants and the victims.

On Scapegoats

"Know / That it was he, in times past, which held you / So under fortune."
-From Shakespeare's Macbeth (III, i, 83-5)

"The Jews are our destruction. They provoked and brought about this war. What they mean to acheive by it is to destroy the German state and nation... Every Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people."
-From "The Jews Are to Blame!", by Joseph Goebbels.

"And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back- to capitalism, or forward- to socialism. There is no third way, nor can there be...
"What does this mean? It means that we have passed from the policy of restricting the exploiting proclivities of the Kulaks to the policy of eliminating the Kulaks as a class."
-From "Collectivization and the Liquidation of the Kulaks", written by Joseph Stalin in 1929

On Censorship and Propoganda

"The party leadership of literature must be thoroughly purged of all philistine influences. Party members active in literature must not only be teachers of ideas which will muster the energy of the proletariat in all countries for the last battle for its freedom; the party leadership msut, in all its conduct, show a morally authoritative force."
-From Maxin Gorky's "The Craftsmen of Culture", written in 1934

"From a Jew's countenance- the evil devil talks to us,
The devil, who in every land- is known as evil plague."
-Taken from a verse recited by German school children under the Third Reich

"Over the road cleared of the last scum and filth of the past, we, our people, with our beloved leader and teacher, the great Stalin, at our head, will march as before onwards and onwards, towards communism!"
-From Andrei Vyshinsky's "Traitors Must Be Shot Like Dirty Dogs!", written in 1938

"Besides, I find no newspaper or magazine that would print an opposition opinion."
-From a letter written by S. Ricarda Huch in 1933

On Those Who Survived

"Despair is no solution. I know that. What is the solution? Hitler had one. And he tried it while a civilized world kept silent. I remember. And I am afraid."
-Elie Wiesel, quoted in Aspects of Western Civilization, by Perry M. Rogers.

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