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. SnyderRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of active participation in preserving democracy and the rule of law.
Timothy D. Snyder stresses that civic responsibility is essential for maintaining the values of democracy and the rule of law. He warns against passivity, reminding us that these fundamental principles require collective action and dedication; waiting for others to take the lead may ultimately lead to their deterioration or loss.
Themes
DemocracyLawCivic DutyResponsibilityParticipation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in political speeches to inspire activism.
More from Timothy D. Snyder
All quotes →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. SnyderRead
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. SnyderRead
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. SnyderRead
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. SnyderRead
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. SnyderRead
Similar quotes
If at any time all labour should cease, and all existing provisions be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive--all would have perished by want of subsistence.
Abraham LincolnRead
The only difference between a hero and the villain is that the villain chooses to use that power in a way that is selfish and hurts other people.
Chadwick BosemanRead
Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors.
Joseph CampbellRead
The basic question 'will I obey Christ 's teaching?' is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus' commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don't know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command.
Dallas WillardRead
I am the harvest of man's stupidity. I am the fruit of the holocaust. I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can't forget.
Eugene B. SledgeRead
You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circunstances.
Julian BarnesRead