Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of the marketplace.
The justification for those actions was that we were living in a very hard, predatory, cloak-and-dagger world and that the only way to deal with a totalitarian enemy was to intimidate him. The trouble with this theory was that while we live in a world of plot and counterplot, we also live in a world of cause and effect. Whatever the cause for the decision to legitimize and regularize deceit abroad, the inevitable effect was the practice of deceit at home.
The attempt to politicize everything is the destruction of politics. When everything is seen as relevant to politics, than politics has in fact become totalitarian.
Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.
If someone thinks I'm a dickhead, fine, listen to someone else's record, then. We're not a totalitarian regime; no one's forced to listen to Coldplay. It's actually quite a compliment if you're something that people can stand against.
A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.
I have read somewhere that in a totalitarian system martyrdom does better than thought.
The Left is totalitarian in its nature
I began to think of war, even so-called "good wars" like World War II, as corrupting everybody. Violence begetting violence. The good guys beginning to act like the bad guys. And when I studied the history of wars, it seemed to me that that was the case. Athens vs. Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. The Athenians presumably the democratic state. The Spartans the totalitarian state. But as the war went on, the Athenians began to act like the Spartans. They began committing atrocities and cruelties. So I saw this as a characteristic of war, even so-called "good wars. "
To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.
Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.
If we were to make no better use of victory than to countenance existing trends in this direction, only too visible before 1939, we might indeed find that we have defeated National Socialism merely to create a world of many national socialisms, differing in detail, but all equally totalitarian, nationalistic, and in recurrent conflict with each other.
People tell me, 'Bill, let it go. The Kennedy assassination was years ago. It was just the assassination of a President and the hijacking of our government by a totalitarian regime - who cares? Just let it go. ' I say, 'All right then. That whole Jesus thing? Let it go! It was 2,000 years ago! Who cares?'
For Russians in the '90s, there was that sense of not knowing what the future held at all. And coming off a long period of when people actually were robbed of the ability to plan their future - that's very much a part of totalitarian control - that exacerbated it. In this country, we are not coming off a long period like that. But I think that for a lot of Americans, as a result of globalization, as a result of the housing crisis, the future is just too uncertain. And their place in the world is too uncertain.
What's certain is that a totalitarian enclave like Cuba's can't continue to exist, so change will definitely come there, eventually.
Even 51 per cent of a nation can establish a totalitarian and dictatorial règime, suppress minorities, and still remain democratic; there is, as we have said, little doubt that the American Congress and the French Chambre have a power over their respective nations which would rouse the envy of a Louis XIV or a George III were they alive today.
The nightmare in every democracy, the very nightmare, is if it gets worse and worse and worse, we could end up totalitarian.
Advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.
Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.
There is only one Islam, and that is a totalitarian ideology that has no room for anything but Islam.
