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1 " The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians. "
― George Orwell , The Lost Orwell: Being a Supplement to The Complete Works of George Orwell
2 " A note on language. Be even more suspicious than I was just telling you to be, of all those who employ the term " we" or " us" without your permission. This is another form of surreptitious conscription, designed to suggest that " we" are all agreed on " our" interests and identity. Populist authoritarians try to slip it past you; so do some kinds of literary critics (" our sensibilities are enraged..." ) Always ask who this " we" is; as often as not it's an attempt to smuggle tribalism through the customs. An absurd but sinister figure named Ron " Maulana" Karenga—the man who gave us Ebonics and Kwanzaa and much folkloric nationalist piffle—once ran a political cult called " US." Its slogan—oddly catchy as well as illiterate—was " Wherever US is, We are." It turned out to be covertly financed by the FBI, though that's not the whole point of the story. Joseph Heller knew how the need to belong, and the need for security, can make people accept lethal and stupid conditions, and then act as if they had imposed them on themselves. "
3 " There is a philosophy by which many people live their lives, and it is this: life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you've got, the less shit you have to eat.These people are often selfish brats as kids, and they don't get better with age: think of the shifty-eyed smarmy asshole from the sixth form who grow up to be a merchant banker, or an estate agent, or one of the Conservative Party funny-handshake mine's a Rolex brigade. (This isn't to say that all estate agents, or merchant bankers, or conservatives are selfish, but that these are ways of life that provide opportunities of a certain disposition to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Bear with me.)There is another philosophy by which people live their lives, and it goes thus: You will do as I say or I will hurt you.. . . Let me draw you a Venn diagram with two circles on it, denoting sets of individuals. They overlap: the greedy ones and the authoritarian ones. Let's shade in the intersecting area in a different color and label it: dangerous. Greed isn't automatically dangerous on its won, and petty authoritarians aren't usually dangerous outside their immediate vicinity -- but when you combine the two, you get gangsters and dictators and hate-spewing preachers. "
― Charles Stross , The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files #3)
4 " Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT. "
― Timothy Snyder , On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
