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" Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Possible
Obedience
Teaches
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" Republics, like other forms of government, exist in history and can rise and fall. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Rise
History
Government
" To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Nothing
Abandon
Facts
" For the Russians, the displacement of the Holocaust is calculated and cynical. It's not emotional; they don't care about the Holocaust one way or another. They only care about it insofar as they can use it to manipulate a German sense of guilt. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Way
Holocaust
Care
" It is aspiring tyrants who say that 'civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.' Conversely, leaders who wish to preserve the rule of law find other ways to speak about real terrorist threats, and certainly do not invent them or deliberately make them worse. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Safety
Say
Wish
" People in the West tend to identify with western victims. So even when they think about the Holocaust, they really think about the German or French victims; they're not thinking about the Polish, Hungarian, or Soviet victims. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Holocaust
People
Think
" In rhetoric and action, the Trump administration has aggrandized 'radical Islamic terror,' thus making what Madison called a 'favorable emergency' more likely. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Action
Trump
Rhetoric
" Modern tyrants are terror managers. Do not allow your shock to be turned against your freedom. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Freedom
Modern
Tyrants
" We can only see as much and we can only go as far as our languages take us. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Go
See
Take
" Americans can accept that the American Dream will not work out for them; what has been heartbreaking for so many is the sense that their children will have it even worse. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Work
Children
American Dream
" If you want to avoid criticism, then you shouldn't be a historian, because historians are trying to understand and explain. If you're trying to please people, then you should go into the fashion business, or the candy business. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Fashion
People
Criticism
" Americans do not want to think that there is an alternative to what we have. Therefore, as soon as you say 'fascism' or whatever it might be, then the American response is to say 'no' because we lack the categories that allow us to think outside of the box that we are no longer in. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Say
American
Fascism
" Think up your own way of speaking. When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Media
Own
Think
" Democracy only has substance if there's the rule of law. That is, if people believe that the votes are going to be counted, and they are counted. If they believe that there's a judiciary out there that will make sense of things if there's some challenge. If there isn't rule of law, people will be afraid to vote the way they want to vote. "
Timothy D. Snyder
People
Challenge
Law
" One thing that I would like to get across is that even the most horrible events do have explanations that we can understand. And it's not always comfortable for us to understand, because in order to understand, we have to see how we're not so far away from the people in question. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Understand
People
Far Away
" If we don't have access to facts, we can't trust each other. Without trust, there's no law. Without law, there's no democracy. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Trust
Democracy
Facts
" If we can't have exchanges with our friends and family, with loved ones that won't at some point be made public, then we can't have private lives. And if we can't have private lives, then we're not really free people. "
Timothy D. Snyder
People
Family
Free
" I think, whatever ideological coloration we think actually applies to Trump, we can be pretty confident that he sees the American state as a mechanism to make sure that people called Trump are rich forever. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Rich
Think
People
" Most Americans are exceptionalists; we think we live outside of history. "
Timothy D. Snyder
History
Most
Live
" Get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Surround Yourself
Books
Room
" Getting out to protest, this is something real and, I would say, something patriotic. Part of the new authoritarianism is to get people to prefer fiction and inaction to reality and action. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Reality
Say
Action
" The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror - real or fake, provoked or accidental - can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Fake
Death
Democracy
" What we ended up with, from Bill Clinton onward, is a status quo party and an 'undo the system' party, where the Democrats became the status quo party and the Republicans became the 'undo the system' party. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Status Quo
System
Democrats
" Every day you don't do something, it makes it less likely that you will ever do something. So you've got to get started right away. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Away
Will
Right
" When a terrorist attack comes, you will not necessarily know who did it. What you can know is that certain kinds of leaders will use that to suspend your rights. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Know
Will
You
" Totalitarianism is not about some state that appears out of nowhere and suddenly is all-powerful. There can't be any such thing. Totalitarianism starts when the difference between your public life and your private life is effaced. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Life
Private Life
Nowhere
" It is unclear how much money Trump has, but it is not enough to matter in Russia. If he keeps up his pose as the tough billionaire, he will be flattered by the Russian media, scorned by those who matter in Russia, and then easily crushed by men far richer and smarter than he. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Media
Men
Money
" Maybe I am naive, but I don't think talking about the Holocaust with total and complete cynicism is possible for Israeli politicians. It's inevitable that the Holocaust is part of Israeli politics. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Possible
I Am
Politics
" Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of 'our institutions' unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Media
Go
Beginning
" Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Experience
Communism
Democracy
" In the descent from a world of factual discourse into a world of emotions and alternative realities, the first step you take, whether you're the Russian media, whether you're Breitbart, is that you manufacture lots of stuff that isn't true. The second step is that you claim that everyone is like this. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Media
Step
First Step