Top 350 Timothy Snyder Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie,” wrote Havel, “then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.” Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some private responsibility for the public’s sense of truth.”

— Timothy Snyder

252. “What might seem like a gesture of pride can be a source of exclusion.”

— Timothy Snyder

253. “For us, the lesson is that our natural fear and grief must not enable the destruction of our institutions.”

— Timothy Snyder

254. “Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some private responsibility for the public’s sense of truth.”

— Timothy Snyder

255. “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.”

— Timothy Snyder

256. “Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some responsibility for the public’s sense of truth. If we are serious about seeking the facts, we can each make a small revolution in the way the internet works. If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others.”

— Timothy Snyder

257. “Extremism’ certainly sounds bad, and governments often try to make it sound worse by using the word ‘terrorism’ in the same sentence. But the word has little meaning. There is no doctrine called ‘extremism.’ When tyrants speak of ‘extremists’, they just mean people who are not in the mainstream – as the tyrants themselves are defining that mainstream at that particular moment.”

— Timothy Snyder

258. “It took less than a year for the new Nazi order to consolidate. By the end of 1933, Germany had become a one-party state in which all major institutions had been humbled.”

— Timothy Snyder

259. “Be wary of paramilitaries.”

— Timothy Snyder

260. “Be wary of paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.”

— Timothy Snyder

261. “Make eye contact and small talk.”

— Timothy Snyder

262. “Whoever can pierce your privacy can humiliate you and disrupt your relationships at will. No.”

— Timothy Snyder

263. “The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

— Timothy Snyder

264. “The move to separate from the EU is not a step backward onto firm ground, but a leap into the unknown.”

— Timothy Snyder

265. “The capacity for trust and learning can make life seem less chaotic and mysterious, and democratic politics more plausible and attractive.”

— Timothy Snyder

266. “We are free only insofar as we exercise control over what people know about us, and in what circumstances they come to know it. During.”

— Timothy Snyder

267. “What matters is that this spectacular act of terror initiated the politics of emergency. Gazing.”

— Timothy Snyder

268. “After the Second World War, Europeans, Americans, and others created myths of righteous resistance to Hitler. In the 1930s, however, the dominant attitudes had been accommodation and admiration. By 1940 most Europeans had made their peace with the seemingly irresistible power of Nazi Germany. Influential Americans such as Charles Lindbergh opposed war with the Nazis under the slogan “America First.”

— Timothy Snyder

269. “Lawyers were vastly overrepresented among the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces who carried out the mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, Polish elites, communists, the handicapped, and others.”

— Timothy Snyder

270. “Why then should we form our political judgment on the basis of zero investment? We get what we pay for.”

— Timothy Snyder

271. “Contribute to good causes.”

— Timothy Snyder

272. “You can certainly concede freedom without becoming more secure. The.”

— Timothy Snyder

273. “We believe that we have checks and balances, but have rarely faced a situation like the present: when the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses. The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with the society at large, and several that are generally unpopular – and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it.”

— Timothy Snyder

274. “Most governments, most of the time, seek to monopolize violence. If only the government can legitimately use force, and this use is constrained by law, then the forms of politics that we take for granted become possible.”

— Timothy Snyder

275. “A party emboldened by a favorable election result or motivated by ideology, or both, might change the system from within.”

— Timothy Snyder

276. “So having a passport is not a sign of surrender. On the contrary, it is liberating, since it creates the possibility of new experiences. It allows us to see how other people, sometimes wiser than we, react to similar problems. Since so much of what has happened in the last year is familiar to the rest of the world or from recent history, we must observe and listen.”

— Timothy Snyder

277. “The final mode is misplaced faith.”

— Timothy Snyder

278. “Germans carried out what they called the “Great Action,” deporting some 265,040 Jews to the death factory at Treblinka to be.”

— Timothy Snyder

279. “The peasants who had more land or livestock than others were the first to lose what they had. A.”

— Timothy Snyder

280. “It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf.”

— Timothy Snyder

281. “If members of the professions confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment, however, they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have thought unimaginable.”

— Timothy Snyder

282. “The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow.”

— Timothy Snyder

283. “A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well – and wishing that it would do better. Democracy.”

— Timothy Snyder

284. “All in all, regular policemen murdered more Jews than the Einsatzgruppen. Many of them had no special preparation for this task. They found themselves in an unknown land, they had their orders, and they did not want to look weak. In the rare cases when they refused these orders to murder Jews, policemen were not punished.”

— Timothy Snyder

285. “Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism.”

— Timothy Snyder

286. “What does it mean that six of the president’s companies have gone bankrupt, and that the president’s enterprises have been financed by mysterious infusions of cash from entities in Russia and Kazakhstan?”

— Timothy Snyder

287. “Influential Americans such as Charles Lindbergh opposed war with the Nazis under the slogan “America First.” It.”

— Timothy Snyder

288. “Beware the one-party state. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.”

— Timothy Snyder

289. “As they knew, Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.”

— Timothy Snyder

290. “To Ukrainians, Americans seemed comically slow to react to the obvious threats of cyberwar and fake news. When.”

— Timothy Snyder

291. “Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.”

— Timothy Snyder

292. “Rather than defining facts or generating interpretations, we are seduced by the notion of hidden realities and dark conspiracies that explain everything.”

— Timothy Snyder

293. “Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century. One advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.”

— Timothy Snyder

294. “The habit of dwelling on victimhood dulls the impulse of self-correction.”

— Timothy Snyder

295. “Germany then remained in a state of emergency for the next twelve years, until the end of the Second World War. Hitler had used an act of terror, an event of limited inherent significance, to institute a regime of terror that killed millions of people and changed the world.”

— Timothy Snyder

296. “Accepting the markings as a natural part of the urban landscape was already a compromise with a murderous future.”

— Timothy Snyder

297. “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.”

— Timothy Snyder

298. “The seduction by a mythicized pas prevents us from thinking about possible futures.”

— Timothy Snyder

299. “Hitler had used an act of terror, an event of limited inherent significance, to institute a regime of terror that killed millions of people and changed the world. The.”

— Timothy Snyder

300. “Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you.”

— Timothy Snyder