How to Lose a Country Quotes

“Today, the voice of populist infantile politics is amplified by social media allowing the ignorant to claim equality with the informed.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Sometimes there happens to be a particularly determined person in the audience who asks, ‘So where is the hope?’ My answer is always the same: ‘Follow the young women.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Truth is not mathematical concept that needs to be proved with equations. Its singleness demands an intact moral compass, with certainties about what is good and bad.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“The spectre of alternative truth – highly organised, large-scale lies – that haunts the establishment today was heralded by the normalisation of shamelessness.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“The age of pretending not to see the victim is over. This is the era of gawping at the oppressed and having a good laugh about it, even when the oppressor hasn't actually called for you to do so.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Pretending to have fun on such a massive scale is just a manifestation of our lost capacity to experience joy.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“when people's needs are urgent it's not hard to convince them that instead of fighting for social equality it makes more sense to show loyalty to a political party in return for a daily loaf of bread and a few lumps of coal.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“After all the job of a troll is relatively mundane. Their mission is not to discuss a topic or refute an argument but to terrorize the communication space with unprecedented hostility and aggression in order to force opposing ideas into retreat.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“the industry found no shortage of ambitious collaborations eager to show what humans are capable of when shame and mercy are removed from the list of ground rules.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“The global attack on women, and the connected attempt by right-wing populism to reshape them into characters from The Handmaid’s Tale, excludes no nationality, no social class, no religion and no privilege.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Humans are incapable of functioning and living together without a good story to bind them and keep a certain set of values intact. That’s why the lack of a story in neoliberalism, the lack of meaning and cause, can be unbearable for the human mind.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“A woman’s image, and sometimes her soul, is moulded and unmoulded, shaped according to the regime’s taste and used as a store mannequin to promote the prevailing political power’s concept of the ideal female citizen. Every regime, without exception, starts building its ideal citizen by tampering with its women.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Feeling nothing was now a badge of honour.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“He gave them something solid to hate, and they gave him their votes. And once he started speaking in the name of we – as has happened many times over the course of history – they were ready to sacrifice themselves. As Americans know very well from their own constitution, the words ‘We, the people’ can build a new country and bring empires to their knees.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Trump knew one simple fact about people that many of us choose to ignore: that even though individualism as a concept has been elevated for many decades, the ordinary man still needs a shepherd to lead him to greatness. He knew how diminishing and disappointing it can feel to realise that you are only mediocre, in a world where you have constantly been told that you can be anything you want to be.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“When I see Mark Zuckerberg with his T-shirts and jeans and trainers, I always think of Umberto Eco saying fascism doesn’t always show up in uniform. Now we know it can also appear in casual wear.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Our mistake wasn't that we didn't do what we could have done, rather that we didn't know that we should have done it earlier.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“«Una sociedad que se mueve por el afán de beneficios está condenada al fracaso.»”
― Ece Temelkuran, Cómo perder un país: Los siete pasos que van de la democracia a la dictadura

“El poder de la normalidad numérica alienta aún más el alejamiento de la racionalidad y expande los límites de la vulgaridad hasta que esta llega a invadir por completo la esfera pública”
― Ece Temelkuran, Cómo perder un país: Los siete pasos que van de la democracia a la dictadura

“Some of us cannot and never will understand why a man who can hardly make a living is proud of the fact that Erdoğan’s is ‘the greatest palace’, or why he rejoices when he hears that the daily cost of running that palace is ten times more than he earns in a year.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism

“Albert Camus, que en cierta ocasión dijo: «Un hombre con el que no se puede razonar es un hombre al que hay que temer.»”
― Ece Temelkuran, Cómo perder un país: Los siete pasos que van de la democracia a la dictadura

“He also knew that the call to break the imaginary chains of slavery preventing the real people from reaching greatness would resonate with his supporters, regardless of the fact that it sounded absurd to those who had had the chance to become what they wanted to be. ‘It’s not you,’ he told them. ‘It’s them who prevent us from being great.’ He gave them something solid to hate, and they gave him their votes.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“A new generation that will hold on to its religion and grudges was being built, just as president Erdoğan had promised years ago.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“our eagerness to understand people's desire to be slaves has had us glued to our smartphones and computer screens seeking answers, and the process has become so time consuming and so fulfilling that we have felt as if things are not actually happening to us.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Whatever the answer is, it ought to be clear to all of us that it does not include the luxury of not taking action, namely political action. our concept of Joy should be redefined to understand the collective action does not only make for a better world, but a fulfilled individual.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“We have also failed to grasp the fact that understanding requires action. If we are not politically active or reactive, then the act of understanding turns into only the expression and exchange of emotional responses.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“I couldn't help but wonder: are we pushing the idea of carnival too far, and turning everything into entertainment?”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Every regime, without exception, starts building it's ideal citizen by tampering with its women. It takes a whole generation to create a new man, but redesigning women, so they believe, is an overnight job.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“during the 8 years of his second term as prime minister, by supplying the unemployed with menial state-paid seasonal summer jobs designed by local government which took only a few hours a day, Orbán had lowered the unemployment rate from 11.4 to 3.8 per cent. This provided him with thousands of loyal supporters whose daily bread depended on his reelection.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship

“Ben de counting began and it became clear that Erdoğan would not win, the Higher Electoral Board changed the election law from 1 hour to the next, following pressure from the later himself, and egregious fake votes for Erdoğan were deemed valid.”
― Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship