The Authoritarian Moment Quotes

“because man is a threat to man, human beings seek safety and satisfaction in authority;”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“Authoritarians rarely recognize their own authoritarianism. To them, authoritarianism looks like simple virtue.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“Тепер же соціальні мережі дедалі менше схожі на відкриті місця для зустрічей і більше нагадують міські площі в пуританській Новій Англії 1720 року: менше вільного обміну ідеями, більше натовпу та акцій.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“droogs”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“More than six in ten Americans say they fear saying what they think, including a majority of liberals, 64 percent of moderates, and fully 77 percent of conservatives.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“Writing in 1831, the greatest observer of America and democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, summed up the threat of democratic despotism in terms that sound shockingly, eerily prescient: Under the absolute government of one alone, despotism struck the body crudely, so as to reach the soul; and the soul, escaping from those blows, rose gloriously above it; but in democratic republics, tyranny does not proceed in this way; it leaves the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says to it: You shall think as I do or you shall die; he says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, your goods, everything remains to you; but from this day on, you are a stranger among us. You shall keep your privileges in the city, but they will become useless to you; for if you crave the vote of your fellow citizens, they will not grant it to you, and if you demand only their esteem, they will still pretend to refuse it to you. You shall remain among men, but you shall lose your rights of humanity. When you approach those like you, they shall flee you as being impure; and those who believe in your innocence, even they shall abandon you, for one would flee them in their turn. Go in peace, I leave you your life, but I leave it to you worse than death.37”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a fellow progressive, explained that the state had the ability to restrict reproduction of those with Down syndrome, since “It would be strange if [the public welfare] could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.”7 Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, called for the sterilization or quarantining of some “fifteen or twenty millions of our populations” in order to prevent the supposed poisoning of the gene pool.8”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“time and again in politics, unity has been used as a club to wield against those who disagree.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“because it is an industry that’s about ideas, and if you treat disagreement as a source of harm or personal safety, then it’s very challenging to do good work.”14 The threat to core American values is only increasing.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. . . . .The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.”13”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child,” Epstein wrote. “Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.”14 The media reacted with unmitigated scorn and fury. Dr. Jill, they said, was not merely a doctor—she was the greatest doctor since Jonas Salk.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“less white” means to be “less arrogant, less certain, less defensive, less ignorant, and more humble”—and claiming that this discriminatory content was designed to enhance “inclusion.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“It’s not that everybody hates you. It’s that millions of Americans are afraid to say that they agree with you.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“Because buried in authoritarianism is always one deep flaw: its insecurity. If authoritarians had broad and deep support, they wouldn’t require compulsion. The dirty secret of our woke authoritarians is that they are the minority. You are the majority.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

“It is worth noting that there is no clause of the Constitution whereby the president can simply implement his favored policies without congressional approval.”
― Ben Shapiro, The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent