"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Anything not forbidden is compulsory."
— T.H. White (The Once and Future King)

"Totalitarianism is not only hell, but all the dream of paradise-- the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith, without secrets from one another. Andre Breton, too, dreamed of this paradise when he talked about the glass house in which he longed to live. If totalitarianism did not exploit these archetypes, which are deep inside us all and rooted deep in all religions, it could never attract so many people, especially during the early phases of its existence. Once the dream of paradise starts to turn into reality, however, here and there people begin to crop up who stand in its way. and so the rulers of paradise must build a little gulag on the side of Eden. In the course of time this gulag grows ever bigger and more perfect, while the adjoining paradise gets even smaller and poorer."
— Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

"The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything....The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place."
— Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

"Prävention, die das Recht konsumiert, hat den Zug zu Totalität und Exzessivität."
— Heribert Prantl (Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht)

"In einem maßlosen Staat [...] gibt es vielleicht ein wenig mehr Sicherheit, aber ganz sicher sehr viel weniger Freiheit."
— Heribert Prantl (Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht)

"On the 'Celestial Seasonings' green tea packet there is a short explanation of its benefits: 'Green tea is a natural source of antioxidants, which neutralize harmful molecules in the body known as free radicals. By taming free radicals, antioxidants help the body maintain its natural health.' Mutatis mutandis, is not the notion of totalitarianism one of the main ideological antioxidants, whose function throughout its career was to tame free radicals, and thus to help the social body to maintain its politico-ideological good health?"
— Slavoj Žižek (Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion)