Markus Zusak Quotes

Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.

Model communes are the ones where the leaders lie the best and the biggest.

Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it.

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.

Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people.

It strikes me there's a bunch of people in power who have really strong intentions of running the world and adjusting the world to exactly how they see it.

Machiavelli had some cold tricks for people who wanted to be demagogues and wanted to take over the world.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

One of the regime's most important tactics is the creation of a third force in the country.

Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.

The Left Elite only pretend to be concerned about what's best for everyone else because it is the most effective way to manipulate you and your children into their abyss.

A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.

Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.

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

Demagogues are the mob's lackeys.

Force always attracts men of low morality ... tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.

Naturally the common people don't want war ... but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

A dictator ... must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power.

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesize and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

The people always have some champion who they set over them and nurse into greatness …. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears, he is a protector.

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument — the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American

Demagoguery is not unknown in American history.