Timothy Snyder (author) > Quotes

“In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.”
― Timothy Snyder (author), On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

“Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen.”
― Timothy Snyder (author), On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

“When we commemorate the end of a war, we neglect the way that it began. Every war ends, after all; but not every war had to begin.”
― Timothy Snyder (author)

“Жменька людей з яхтами є політично згуртованішою та могутнішою за величезну масу тих, хто яхт не має, — і ця жменька готова діяти, щоб так тривало й надалі.”
― Timothy Snyder (author), On Freedom

“If, as Ilyin maintained, voting was just an opening to foreign influence, then Putin's job was to make up a story about foreign influence and use it to alter domestic politics. The point was to choose the enemy that best suited a leader's needs, not one that actually threatened the country. Indeed, it was best not to speak of actual threats, since discussing actual enemies would reveal actual weaknesses and suggest the fallibility of aspiring dictators. When Ilyin wrote that the art of politics was “identifying and neutralizing the enemy,” he did not mean that statesmen should ascertain which foreign power actually posed a threat. He meant that politics began with a leader's decision about which foreign enmity will consolidate a dictatorship. Russia's real geopolitical problem was China. But precisely because Chinese power was real and proximate, considering Russia's actual geopolitics might lead to depressing conclusions.
The West was chosen as an enemy precisely because it represented no threat to Russia. Unlike China, the EU had no army and no long border with Russia.”
― Timothy Snyder (author)

“In the politics of eternity, the seduction by a mythicized past prevents us from thinking about possible futures. The habit of dwelling on victimhood dulls the impulse of self-correction. Since the nation is defined by its inherent virtue rather than by its future potential, politics becomes a discussion of good and evil rather than a discussion of possible solutions to real problems. Since the crisis is permanent, the sense of emergency is always present; planning for the future seems impossible or even disloyal. How can we even think of reform when the enemy is always at the gate?”
― Timothy Snyder (author)

“What us truth? Sometimes people ask this question because they wish to do nothing.”
― Timothy Snyder (author)

“Health and life are human values, not financial ones; an unregulated market in the treatment of our bodies generates profitable sickness rather than human thriving.”
― Timothy Snyder (author)

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”
― Timothy Snyder (author)

“Staring at screens is perhaps unavoidable, but the two-dimensional world makes little sense unless we can draw upon a mental armory that we have developed somewhere else.”
― Timothy Snyder (author)

“You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case. This renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, but the result is your demise as an individual—and thus the collapse of any political system that depends upon individualism.”
― Timothy Snyder (author)