Elia Kazan Quotes

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

Communism feeds on aggression, hatred, and the imprisonment of men's minds and souls. This shall not take root in the United States.

Totalitarianism liquidates its internal enemies or smashes opposition as soon as it arises; it uses methods that are simple and infallible because they are undemocratic. But democracy can defend itself from within only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy.

All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce obedience by prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their power. The swastika is only one example of many in recent history.

In the Franco era, we couldn't defend our ideas.

Tayyip Erdogan wants to go beyond George W. Bush by making critical journalism and critics in the academy illegal. What will be the difference between him and a military government? Very little. I read his remarks on the effectiveness of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Well, yes. But then the AKP would have to ban all other political parties, close down all critical newspapers, burn the books critical of the regime and gas the Kurds to death...the final solution of the Kurdish 'problem.' Somehow I don't think he is about to do that.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

Since Castro took power, the Cuban people have been denied basic human freedoms. No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no political freedom. And the regime uses brutality and violence to suppress these freedoms and impose its will.

Totalitarian states killed with impunity and no one was held accountable. That didn't happen in the West.

The real evil of the Russian communist state is not communism. It is the secret police and the concentration camp.

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

Literature has its own life, even in a dictatorship like the Soviet Union.

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

I should like to underline: no people, no country, in which a Communist dictatorship has been established, ever found its way out of it.

Most Hungarians know what it was to live in a dictatorship; some are old enough to have known both fascism and communism. No one wants to go back to that.

I've always been fascinated by totalitarian regimes. I'm not an admirer of them.

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.

There is no real public opinion in Communist countries. They are ruled by an oligarchy.

Our age has seen the birth of totalitarian systems and forms of tyranny which would not have been possible in the time before the technological leap forward.

Ideas are dangerous; and the traffic in them has been the concern of all dictators.

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.

In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism the latter adversary will, without question, win and will control the world. The era of democracy is finished and the democratic system bankrupt. There is not room in the world for two different systems or for two different economies.

Communism of every type and stripe brings with it an ideological straight jacket. Thought control, brain-washing, censorship, imprisonment, exile, mental and physical torture are the indispensable weapons of Communist rule.

To trample democracy with one’s feet and to give power to a single man over almost eighty million people is so terrible that one can very probably tremble over the events which will come here.