Meggan

“[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

“When the word 'totalitarianism' is used in casual Western speech, it conjures the image of a monstruous society in which force is applied to every person at all times. Of course, that would be impossibly inefficient, even for an extremely inefficient state such as the Soviet Union. The economy force in totalitarian societies is achieved through terror. Totalitarianism establishes its own social contract, in which most people will be safe from violence most of the time, provided they stay within certain boundaries and shoulder some of the responsibility for keeping other citizens within the same boundaries. The boundaries are ever-shifting - Arendt described totalitarian societies as producing a state of constant flux and inconsistency - and this requires the population to be ever-vigilant in order to stay abreast of the shifts. A hypersensitivity to signals is essential for survival.”
― Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

“Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert’s first sequel to Dune, was published in 1969. In that book, he flipped over what he called the “myth of the hero” and showed the dark side of Paul Atreides. Some readers didn’t understand it. Why would the author do that to his great hero? In interviews, Dad spent years afterward explaining why, and his reasons were sound. He believed that charismatic leaders could be dangerous because they could lead their followers off the edge of a cliff.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

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