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Autocrats Quotes

Browse 14 quotes about Autocrats.

Autocrats Quotes

“In Putin's Russia, Assad's Syria, or Maduro's Venezuela, politicians and television personalities often play a different game. They lie constantly, blatantly, obviously. But when they are exposed, they don't bother to offer counterarguments. When Russian-controlled forces shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government reacted not only with a denial but with multiple stories, plausible and implausible: they blamed the Ukrainian army, or the CIA, or a nefarious plot in which 298 dead people were placed on a plane in order to fake a crash and discredit Russia. This tactic, the so-called "fire hose of falsehoods," produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you can never know? If can't understand what is going on around you, then you are not going to join a great movement for democracy, or follow a truth-telling leader, or listen when anyone speaks about positive political change. Instead, you will avoid politics altogether. Autocrats have an enormous incentive to spread that hopelessness and cynicism, not only in their own countries, but around the world.”

LyingLiesLiarsCynicismHopelessnessNihilismAutocracyFalsehoodsAutocratsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“These selective, occasional murders don't just eliminate difficult opponents; they are also a form of messaging. The Saudi monarchy, the Cuban security services, the Kremlin, and the Chinese police don't have to kill every journalist in order to make all journalists in their countries afraid. Modern dictators have learned that the mass violence of the twentieth century is no longer necessary: targeted violence is often enough to keep ordinary people away from politics altogether, convincing them that it's a contest they can never win.”

PoliticsFearDangerThreatsAutocracyDictatorsMurdersAutocratsAutocraciesAssassinations
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“I’ll tell you something else about which I’ve been lately thinking!” he bellowed in a suddenly stentorian voice. “I've been thinking about our beautiful country! Who gave it to us? I’ve been thinking about how God the Almighty gave us this beautiful sprawling land as a reward for how wonderful we are. We’re big, we’re energetic, we’re generous, which is reflected in all our myths, which are so very populated with large high-energy folks who give away all they have! If we have a National Virtue, it is that we are generous, if we have a National Defect, it is that we are too generous! Is it our fault that these little jerks have such a small crappy land? I think not! God Almighty gave them that small crappy land for reasons of His own. It is not my place to start cross-examining God Almighty, asking why He gave them such a small crappy land, my place is to simply enjoy and protect the big bountiful land God Almighty gave us!” Suddenly Phil didn’t seem like quite so much of a nobody to the other Outer Hornerites. What kind of nobody was so vehement, and used so many confusing phrases with so much certainty, and was so completely accurate about how wonderful and generous and underappreciated they were?”

GodPowerCertaintyNationalismBlessingsPoliticiansGullibilityAutocrats
Book:The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
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“If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those ideas have to be poisoned. That requires not just surveillance, and not merely a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan, a narrative that damages the idea of democracy, wherever it is being used, anywhere in the world.”

PoliticsFreedomDemocracyHuman RightsSurveillancePolitical SystemsAutocracyAutocrats
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“We live in a perilous age. As I write these words, COVID-19 has become a global crisis. Autocrats, including Trump, hold power in a growing number of countries around the world. Democracy and freedom are at greater peril than at any point in decades. The earth is warming at warp speed, and the catastrophic consequences are more evident every day. Despite these warning signs, we are not dramatically changing our habits of consumption or significantly reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Income inequality—the gap between the richest and poorest people in the world—is rising at a rate that engenders growing fury among the less privileged.”

Global WarmingIncome InequalityAutocratsThreat To Democracy
Book:Dealing with The Devil, My Mother, Trump and Me
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“A few autocracies still portray themselves to their citizens as model states. The North Koreans, famously, hold vast military parades with elaborate gymnastics displays and huge portraits of their leader, very much in the Stalinist style. But many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the twentieth century. They don’t offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don’t inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, because there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.”

PropagandaCynicismNorth KoreaPassivityAutocracyAutocratsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“We face a dilemma. 'We' -- the intelligent model of ourselves residing in the neocortex -- are trapped. We are trapped in a body that not only is programmed to die but is largely under the control of an ignorant brute, the old brain. [...] We try to control our old brain's destructive and divisive impulses, but so far we have not been able to do this entirely. Many countries on Earth are still ruled by autocrats and dictators whose motivations are largely driven by their old brain: wealth, sex, and alpha-male-type dominance. The populist movements that support autocrats are also based on old-brain traits such as racism and xenophobia.”

RacismNeuroscienceDilemmaXenophobiaDictatorsAutocratsJeff HawkinsOld Brain
Book:A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence
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“Everyone has something to gain at the end of the world if they are the ones left standing. Kleptocrats, theocrats, autocrats, plutocrats, technocrats, aristocrats - any kind of crat except small-d democrats, the people who value "the power of people" over pure power itself.”

DemocracyAutocratsKleptocratsPlutocratsTechnocratsTheocrat
Book:They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent
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