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" 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

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" Brittle masculinity, in the right setting, becomes political atrocity. Strength brings problems; weakness brings others, but weakness posing as strength is the most dangerous of all. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of 'terrorism' and 'extremism.' Be alive to the fatal notions of 'exception' and 'emergency.' Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" It is not hard to see why Trump might choose Putin as his fantasy friend. Putin is the real-world version of the person Trump pretends to be on television. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" 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

" Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" 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

" People who lived in the 1920s and '30s and '40s were not so different from us. In some ways, they were probably better citizens than we are. They had longer attention spans, for example. Educated people tended to read a bit more than we did. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" 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

" 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

" 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

" Modern tyrants are terror managers. Do not allow your shock to be turned against your freedom. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" 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

" Mr. Trump is primarily a television personality. As such, he is judged by that standard. This means that a scandal does not call forth a response; it calls forth the desire for a bigger scandal. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" 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

" The Constitution is worth saving, the rule of law is worth saving, democracy is worth saving, but these things can and will be lost if everyone waits around for someone else. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" Trump bankrupted six companies but succeeded on the biggest of stages. He is the champion of failures. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" 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

" The premise of Russian foreign policy to the West is that the rule of law is one big joke; the practice of Russian foreign policy is to find prominent people in the West who agree. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" Fascism says what you and I experience as facts or what reporters experience as facts are irrelevant. All that matters are impressions and emotions and myths. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" Very often, when leaders repeat things over and over, they are preparing you for when that meme actually emerges in reality. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" Courage does not mean not fearing or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" The 20th century shows that the form of government that we take for granted, a constitutional democratic republic with checks and balances and a rule of law - that form of government is usually temporary. "

Timothy D. Snyder

Take For Granted

" There's a basic problem with the history of the Holocaust. The people who do it don't know the necessary languages. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" Get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. "

Timothy D. Snyder

Surround Yourself

" 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

" To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" It's easy for us to congratulate ourselves on our own moral superiority when compared to the 1930s, but I'm not sure that we're actually right about that. In most of the West, we simply haven't been tested in the same way. And when we are tested, we often fail. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" 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

" We can only see as much and we can only go as far as our languages take us. "

Timothy D. Snyder

" 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