If you want to avoid criticism, then you shouldn't be a historian, because historians are trying to understand and explain. If you're trying to please people, then you should go into the fashion business, or the candy business. Timothy D. Snyder More Quotes by Timothy D. Snyder More Quotes From Timothy D. Snyder The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror - real or fake, provoked or accidental - can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy. Timothy D. Snyder fake democracy today death It is aspiring tyrants who say that 'civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.' Conversely, leaders who wish to preserve the rule of law find other ways to speak about real terrorist threats, and certainly do not invent them or deliberately make them worse. Timothy D. Snyder end speak law wish In the descent from a world of factual discourse into a world of emotions and alternative realities, the first step you take, whether you're the Russian media, whether you're Breitbart, is that you manufacture lots of stuff that isn't true. The second step is that you claim that everyone is like this. Timothy D. Snyder step you media world Totalitarianism is not about some state that appears out of nowhere and suddenly is all-powerful. There can't be any such thing. Totalitarianism starts when the difference between your public life and your private life is effaced. Timothy D. Snyder your difference private-life life If we can't have exchanges with our friends and family, with loved ones that won't at some point be made public, then we can't have private lives. And if we can't have private lives, then we're not really free people. Timothy D. Snyder loved friends family people
