Dictators fall when they're overconfident; they stay in power when they're paranoid.
Masha GessenRead
When totalitarian regimes are established, they at least have the illusion of the single-minded purpose. But once they establish the stature that's necessary for a totalitarian regime, they tend to flail.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Totalitarian regimes may present a united front initially, but they often struggle to maintain control over time.
This quote by Masha Gessen highlights the fundamental contradictions of totalitarian regimes. While they may initially create an appearance of cohesion and purpose, as these regimes solidify their power, they often face internal strife and chaos. This suggests that authoritarian control can lead to a disconnect between the regime's pretensions of unity and the reality of governance, revealing vulnerabilities that may ultimately lead to their downfall.
Themes
TotalitarianismRegimePowerControlChaos
In practice
Example use cases
Discussing the nature of governance in a political science class.
More from Masha Gessen
All quotes →When you lose your freedom, you lose, first and foremost, the opportunity to choose the company you keep.
Masha GessenRead
There's the hypothesis that things just keep happening to Russians, things that keep turning them into the same kind of subjects, as opposed to citizens. The more credible hypothesis, I think, is that there is a kind of trauma, a social trauma that is passed on from generation to generation.
Masha GessenRead
We learn to think of history as something that has already happened, to other people. Our own moment, filled as it is with minutiae destined to be forgotten, always looks smaller in comparison.
Masha GessenRead
Russia, at the start of the 21st century, at least in its larger cities, very much resembled the United States of the early 1990s: being gay was no longer criminal or shameful, but it was still not a topic for polite conversation or public discussion.
Masha GessenRead
... fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there-because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don't think it should exist.
Masha GessenRead
Similar quotes
[I]t seems to me as clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime.
Mahatma GandhiRead
To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves.. Yet once being born there is no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us.
Hayao MiyazakiRead
God's law is our pleasure when the God of the law is our God.
Charles SpurgeonRead
God is one, but he has innumerable forms. He is the creator of all and He himself takes the human form.
Guru NanakRead
A people armed and free, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression.
James MadisonRead
It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined. Over the years, as the memory of Sophie Mol ... slowly faded, the Loss of Sophie Mol grew robust and alive. It was always there. Like a fruit in season. Every season. As permanent as a government job.
Arundhati RoyRead