Timothy Snyder

Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy.

Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

It is those who were considered exceptional, eccentric, or even insane in their own time—those who did not change when the world around them did—whom we remember and admire today.

Churchill said that history would be kind to him, because he intended to write it himself.

we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.

Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason.

Post-truth is pre-fascism.

Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism. They used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts. And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share.

We are free only when it is we ourselves who draw the line between when we are seen and when we are not seen.

totalitarianism was not an all-powerful state, but the erasure of the difference between private and public life.