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Warbreaker
by
Look, Princess, I’m not the type to give brilliant advice or deep counsel. I’m a mercenary. You pay me, you point me, and I go stab things.
“Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.”
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
“Victor Klemperer, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, turned his philological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler’s language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others (the president uses the word in this way), encounters were always struggles (the president says winning), and any attempt by free people to understand the world in a different way was defamation of the leader (or, as the president puts it, libel). Politicians”
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
“Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.”
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
“The most intelligent of the Nazis, the legal theorist Carl Schmitt, explained in clear language the essence of fascist governance. The way to destroy all rules, he explained, was to focus on the idea of the exception. A Nazi leader outmaneuvers his opponents by manufacturing a general conviction that the present moment is exceptional, and then transforming that state of exception into a permanent emergency. Citizens then trade real freedom for fake safety. When”
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
“When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.”
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
― On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Natalie’s 2025 Year in Books
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