Top 350 Timothy Snyder Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Armed groups first degrade a political order, and then transform it. Violent right-wing groups, such as the Iron Guard in interwar Romania or the Arrow Cross in interwar Hungary, intimidated their rivals.”

— Timothy Snyder

302. “Our time is certainly out of joint. We have forgotten history for one reason and, if we are not careful, we will neglect it for another. We will have to repair our own sense of time if we wish to renew our commitment to liberty.”

— Timothy Snyder

303. “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

304. “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

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

— Timothy Snyder

306. “In the twentieth century, all the major enemies of freedom were hostile to non-governmental organizations, charities, and the like.”

— Timothy Snyder

307. “Contribute to good causes.”

— Timothy Snyder

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

— Timothy Snyder

309. “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

310. “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

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

— Timothy Snyder

312. “Does the history of tyranny apply to the United States? Certainly the early Americans who spoke of “eternal vigilance” would have thought so. The.”

— Timothy Snyder

313. “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

314. “In the twentieth century, all the major enemies of freedom were hostile to non-governmental organizations, charities, and the like. Communists required all such groups to be officially registered and transformed them into institutions of control.”

— Timothy Snyder

315. “The final mode is misplaced faith.”

— Timothy Snyder

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

— Timothy Snyder

317. “Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as “just following orders”.”

— Timothy Snyder

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

— Timothy Snyder

319. “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

320. “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

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

— Timothy Snyder

322. “If we have no control over who reads what and when, we have no ability to act in the present or plan for the future. Whoever.”

— Timothy Snyder

323. “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

324. “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

325. “Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional.”

— Timothy Snyder

326. “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

327. “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

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

— Timothy Snyder

329. “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

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

— Timothy Snyder

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

— Timothy Snyder

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

— Timothy Snyder

333. “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.”

— Timothy Snyder

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

— Timothy Snyder

335. “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

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

— Timothy Snyder

337. “Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.”

— Timothy Snyder

338. “Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about – a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union – and take its side. We tend to assume that institutions will automatically maintain themselves against even the most direct attacks.”

— Timothy Snyder

339. “Each story on televised news is “breaking” until it is displaced by the next one.”

— Timothy Snyder

340. “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

341. “Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today. It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures. A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.”

— Timothy Snyder

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

— Timothy Snyder

343. “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

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

— Timothy Snyder

345. “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

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

— Timothy Snyder

347. “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.”

— Timothy Snyder

348. “It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom.”

— Timothy Snyder

349. “Churchill did what others had not done. Rather than concede in advance, he forced Hitler to change his plans.”

— Timothy Snyder

350. “Every man has a name given by the stars given by his neighbors. – ZELDA MISHKOVSKY, 1974.”

— Timothy Snyder