The Infernal Library Quotes

“In 1918 Mao landed a job in a library, the ideal location for a cash strapped nascent megalomaniac in need of easy access to inspirational bad ideas.”
― Daniel Kalder, The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy

“Some Populists also believed that national salvation could be hastened by eating black bread, dressing up as peasants, living among peasants and adopting the traditions of the peasant commune. In fact, the ancient modes of rural life were already disintegrating, and the peasants, disturbed by this bizarre behavior of their social superiors, were often hostile toward the Populists. Rather than rise up, they either responded with indifference or reported the young revolutionaries to the police. Disappointed, some Populists turned to violence as a means of accelerating the revolution.”
― Daniel Kalder, The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy

“After all, neither the French Revolution nor any of the other revolutions that occurred in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century had ushered in eras of glorious reform, let alone utopias. On the contrary, they had resulted in periods of terror and/or sustained counterrevolutionary repression.”
― Daniel Kalder, The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy

“Polish leader Boleslaw Bierut, a charisma-free life support system for a bureaucrat's mustache.”
― Daniel Kalder, The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy

“And if that’s what he can do as a paper-and-ink phantom, imagine what it was like when he was still alive, if you actually shared in his hatreds and believed in the prophecies, and surrendered as the text-Lenin reached up from the page to hand you the crack pipe of revolution for another hit of the good shit.”
― Daniel Kalder, The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy