“There are three kinds of constitution, and an equal number of deviation-forms--perversions, as it were, of them. The constitutions are monarchy, aristocracy, and thirdly that which is based on a property qualification, which it seems appropriate to call timocratic, though most people are wont to call it polity. The best of these is monarchy, the worst timocracy. The deviation from monarchy is tyranny; for both are forms of one-man rule, but there is the greatest difference between them; the tyrant looks to his own advantage, the king to that of his subjects. For a man is not a king unless he is sufficient to himself and excels his subjects in all good things; and such a man needs nothing further; therefore he will not look to his own interests but to those of his subjects; for a king who is not like that would be a mere titular king. Now tyranny is the very contrary of this; the tyrant pursues his own good. And it is clearer in the case of tyranny that it is the worst deviation-form; but it is the contrary of the best that is worst. Monarchy passes over into tyranny; for tyranny is the evil form of one-man rule and the bad king becomes a tyrant. Aristocracy passes over into oligarchy by the badness of the rulers, who distribute contrary to equity what belongs to the city-all or most of the good things to themselves, and office always to the same people, paying most regard to wealth; thus the rulers are few and are bad men instead of the most worthy. Timocracy passes over into democracy; for these are coterminous, since it is the ideal even of timocracy to be the rule of the majority, and all who have the property qualification count as equal. Democracy is the least bad of the deviations;”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term.”
― Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

“Be dubious about someone who suggests that other types of people are like little crawly, infectious things.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“In politics, the near future is likely to be closer to George Orwell’s 1984 than to Brave New World.”
― Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience

“Be careful when our enemies are made to remind us of maggots and cancer and shit. But also beware when it is our empathic intuitions, rather than our hateful ones, that are manipulated by those who use us for their own goals.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“Many political and religious doctrines have followed one another throughout history, but the modus operandi with which new dictators take and maintain power remains esentially the same: to terrorize the people and keep them in the dark.”
― Romain Gagnon, SO MAN CREATED GOD IN HIS OWN IMAGE: The Science of Happiness

“It's through media that dehumanizing ideas are spread and reproduced. That's why totalitarians out a premium on destroying freedom of the press.”
― David Livingstone Smith, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It

“It's through media that dehumanizing ideas are spread and reproduced. That's why totalitarians puts a premium on destroying freedom of the press.”
― David Livingstone Smith, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It

“La tiranía siempre fracasa cuando a la gente no le queda nada mas que perder que sus vidas”
― Jay Kristoff, Darkdawn

“If people are basically selfish -and they are- then asking them to work hard yet earn no more than their unproductive neighbor is asking more than they'll rarely give. But we already know that; communism has failed.”
― Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

“Ideologies, and hence ideological clashes, antagonism, and fixations, are as old as civilization itself. During most of history, ideologies were mainly religious, whereas during modern times they have taken the form often described as "secular religions" or "religion substitutes". They have always served to legitimize socioeconomic and political orders, or have projected alternatives to them.”
― Azar Gat, Ideological Fixation: From the Stone Age to Today's Culture Wars

“A few people -and a few chimpanzees- are just frankly antisocial. Presumably, such cases are the result of something going grievously wrong in a brain that has been built by a particular combination of genes and then submitted to a particular set of environmental pressures, so that it places almost everyone in an outgroup. When such individuals act alone, they are antisocial. But when they gain control over groups or even whole nations, they join the ranks of history’s greatest villains.”
― Malcolm Potts, Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World

“Again and again, we see how cultures and religions frame women’s sexuality as both powerful and dangerous, and as something that must be kept under control.”
― Malcolm Potts, Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World

“…the male desire to control women’s sexual activity can be traced to efforts to ensure paternity. This impulse lurks behind even the most extreme or bizarre expressions of religious obsession, misogyny, and sexual repression.”
― Malcolm Potts, Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World

“The older revolutionaries sought to change the social environment in the hope (if they were idealists and not mere power seekers) of changing human nature. Then coming revolutionaries will make their assault directly on human nature as they find it, in the minds and bodies of their victims or, if you prefer, their beneficiaries.”
― Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience

“Когда говорить правду стало невозможно (поскольку это каралось смертью), пришлось ее маскировать. В еврейской народной традиции маской отчаяния служит танец. А здесь маской правды сделалась ирония. Потому что на нее слух тирана обычно не настроен.”
― Джулиан Барнс, The Noise of Time

“Коль скоро тирания так преуспела в разрушении, что ей стоит разрушить заодно и любовь, умышленно или походя? Тирания требует любви к партии, к государству, к Великому Вождю и Рулевому, к народу. Но от таких великих, благородных, бескорыстных, безусловных «любовей» отвлекает любовь к единственному человеку, буржуазная и волюнтаристская. И в нынешней обстановке людям постоянно угрожает опасность не сохранить себя целиком. Если их последовательно терроризировать, они мутируют, съеживаются, усыхают – все это приемы выживания.”
― Джулиан Барнс, The Noise of Time