Meggan

“In functioning democracies, the contradictions between avowed ideals and reality can be and often are called out, causing social and political change. That does not eliminate the built-in gap, but it has a way of making societies a little more democratic and a little less unequal, in spurts. Totalitarian ideology allows no such correction. Hannah Arendt maintained that any ideology can become totalitarian, but for that to happen it needs to be reduced to a single simple idea, which is then turned into a single simple idea from which the ostensible 'laws of history' are derived - and enforced through terror. What distinguishes a totalitarian ideology is its utterly insular quality. It purports to explain the entire world and everything in it. There is no gap between totalitarian ideology and reality because totalitarian ideology contains all of reality within itself.”
― Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

“No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.”
― Quentin Crisp

“[Hannah] Arendt wrote about the subjugation of public space - in effect the disappearance of public space, which, by depriving a person of boundaries and agency, rendered him profoundly lonely.”
― Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia