These police state quotes will inspire you. Police state, a political unit characterized by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging police state quotes, police state sayings, and police state proverbs.
Best Police State Quotes
- “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” ~ Harry S. Truman
- “In a police state, referencing one’s rights is seen as an act of aggression.” ~ Philip Schuyler
- “You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don’t have any freedom left, or you’re going to build a world that doesn’t create terrorists – and that means a whole different way of ‘getting along.'” ~ John Shelby Spong
-
“A police state is a country run by criminals” ~ Robert Harris
- “A policemans job is only easy in a police state.” ~ Charlton Heston
- “Step by step we see democracy being uprooted like an unwanted weed and the preparation for fascism, for a police state in America. The Congress is largely complicit. The media is supportive. The public is apathetic. By the time apathy is reversed, there may be little opportunity to restore what was lost without massive effort and pain.” ~ Stan Moore
- “I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein
-
“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” ~ James Madison
- “It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.” ~ Bruce Schneier
- “Such an atmosphere is un-American, the most un-American thing we have to contend with today. It is the climate of a totalitarian country in which scientists are expected to change their theories to match changes in the police state’s propaganda line.” ~ Harry S. Truman
- “If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because they live comfortably enough and exercise their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries. You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.” ~ Joe Bageant
-
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” ~ George Orwell
- “Ten minutes in a video store should convince any impartial observer that we live in a police state of consciousness, far more pervasive than the Nazis.” ~ Hakim Bey
- “Hitler had a police state of the first order. And those who showed any sign of being weak-kneed faced prison or often summary execution. That prevented a lot of people who knew that the war was not going to turn out well for Germany from giving up.” ~ Rick Atkinson
- “In the American political lexicon, ‘change’ always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.” ~ Ron Paul
-
“A functioning police state needs no police.” ~ William S. Burroughs
- “Once the people are terrorized, you can force a police state on them.” ~ Mae Brussell
- “…this bill will require the creation of a Federal police force of mammoth proportions. It also bids fair to result in the development of an ‘informer’ psychology in great areas of our national life-neighbors spying on neighbors, workers spying on workers, business spying on businessmen-were those who would harass their fellow citizens for selfish and narrow purposes will have ample inducement to do so. These, the Federal police force an ‘informer’ psychology, are the hallmarks of the police state and landmarks in the destruction of a free society.” ~ Barry Goldwater
- “Unless we abandon elements which resemble a police state, we can’t meet the demands of being a modern society.” ~ Ahmet Necdet Sezer
-
“I’m tired of living in a police state.” ~ L. Neil Smith
- “To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but it is bitter and unforgettable.” ~ Elia Kazan
- “There was no doubt that there was a vast organization which was making fools of all the liberals in Hollywood and taking their money, that there was a police state among the Left element in Hollywood and Broadway.” ~ Elia Kazan
- “The free state offers what a police state denies – the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual.” ~ William O. Douglas
-
“If you stand still there is only one way to go, and that’s backwards.” ~ Peter Shilton
- “Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson
- “Either the USSR was not the country of socialism, in which case socialism didn’t exist anywhere and doubtless, wasn’t possible: or else, socialism was that, this abominable monster, this police state, the power of beasts of prey.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre.
- “Surveillance technologies now available – including the monitoring of virtually all digital information – have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place.” ~ Al Gore
-
“A police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow.” ~ John F. Kennedy
- “The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday’s executioner becomes today’s victim.” ~ Hannah Arendt
- “Not even the most heavily-armed police state can exert brute force to all of its citizens all of the time. Meme management is so much subtler; the rose-tinted refraction of perceived reality, the contagious fear of threatening alternatives.” ~ Peter Watts
- “Americans need to understand that they have lost their country. The rest of the world needs to recognize that Washington is not merely the most complete police state since Stalinism, but also a threat to the entire world. The hubris and arrogance of Washington, combined with Washington’s huge supply of weapons of mass destruction, make Washington the greatest threat that has ever existed to all life on the planet. Washington is the enemy of all humanity.” ~ Paul Craig Roberts
-
“Everywhere we look we see the encroaching shadow of the police state.” ~ Henry Giroux
- “As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started and can be won, if at all, only by converting the United States into a police state.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “Young people increasingly have become subject to an oppressive disciplinary machine that teaches them to define citizenship through the exchange practices of the market and to follow orders and toe the line in the face of oppressive forms of authority. They are caught in a society in which almost every aspect of their lives is shaped by the dual forces of the market and a growing police state.” ~ Henry Giroux
- “What must be addressed in the most immediate sense is the threat that the emerging police state in the United States poses not to just the young protesters occupying a number of American cities, but also the threat it poses to democracy itself. This threat is being exacerbated as a result of the merging of a war-like mentality and neoliberal mode of discipline and education in which it becomes difficult to reclaim the language of obligation, social responsibility and civic engagement.” ~ Henry Giroux
-
“It is foolish for people to think they can align themselves and be safe in a police state.” ~ Naomi Wolf
- “When a leader has deployed a private army, that is one definition of a police state. Another is when the president, or a leader, has his own treasury.” ~ Naomi Wolf
- “Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don’t realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State. Few understand that hard economic times are here to stay.” ~ Paul Craig Roberts
- “I mean a real police state just to get a token recognition of a law. It take, it took, I think, 15,000 troops and 6 million dollars to put one negro in the University of Mississippi. That’s a police action, police state action.” ~ Malcolm X
-
“Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.” ~ Italo Calvino
- “There’s one overriding issue, namely, that we live in a police state so long as the police get to police themselves. And that is why cops go unindicted.” ~ Russell Simmons
- “When you have to pass a law to make a man let me have a house, or you have to pass a law to make a man let me go to school, or you have to pass a law to make a man let me walk down the street, you have to enforce that law and you’d have to be living actually in a police state. It would take a police state in this country.” ~ Malcolm X
- “It’s very clear from what he [Osama ben Laden] said, what his lieutenants have said, that America is not even their main enemy. We’re simply in the way of what they want to do in their own world, which is to destroy police states and Israel.” ~ Michael Scheuer
-
“Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.” ~ Orson Welles
- “The notion that Americans can be protected from “terror” by giving up the Bill of Rights is absurd. Democrats are complicit in this absurd notion. Many were intimidated into voting for police state legislation, because they lacked the intestinal fortitude to call police state legislation by its own name. The legislation that has been passed during the Bush regime is far more dangerous to Americans than Muslim terrorists.” ~ Paul Craig Roberts
- “laughter, that distinctively human emotion, laughter which springs from trust in the other, from willingness to put oneself momentarily in the other’s place, even at one’s own expense, is the special emotional basis of democratic procedures, just as pride is the emotion of an aristocracy, shame of a crowd that rules, and fear of a police state.” ~ Margaret Mead
- “We will no longer be oppressed by the fascism called Christianity. We will no longer be oppressed by the mentality of the police state.” ~ Marilyn Manson
-
“One thing about a police state, you can always find the police.” ~ L. Neil Smith
- “Just because you can watch half-nude women on afternoon television or gay men kissing on the streets of nearly any major city does not mean America is free, as complacent liberals might think, much less too free, as conservatives often suggest. Just because most dissidents are left alone doesn’t mean there is no police state, for that would be convenient indeed for the police statists: the idea that people ought not complain so long as they have the right to do so.” ~ Anthony Gregory
- “The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded.” ~ Vance Packard
- “Capital requires protection, as do the institutions through which it operates. As capital expands its operations, the state that is associated with its protection must develop its capacity for autocratic control. Thus, the “Free World” increasingly resembles a dreary string of heartless police states.” ~ Michael Parenti
- “When making public policy decisions about new technologies for the Government, I think one should ask oneself which technologies would best strengthen the hand of a police state. Then, do not allow the Government to deploy those technologies.” ~ Phil Zimmermann
-
“”Subterranean Homesick Blues” [of Bob Dylan] captures, in word-salad format, life in an encroaching police state.” ~ Bob Dylan
- “Strength, the American way, is not manifested by threats of criminal prosecution or police state methods.
Leadership is not manifested by coercion, even against the resented. Greatness is not manifested by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying any means and any methods.” ~ Margaret Chase Smith - “The problem of South Africa is different than the world thinks. There is no native problem. The native worker gets more than white workers do in England! […] The South African government is not a police state. It’s easier on people than the United States government!” ~ L. Ron Hubbard
- “It seems to me that as economics drives politics and money markets set policies, what we have is an enormously powerful emergence of both a police state on the one hand and an incredible culture of cruelty on the other. All of the sudden, shared hopes are replaced by shared fears.” ~ Henry Giroux
-
“When only cops have guns, it’s called a “police state”.” ~ Claire Wolfe
- “The reason I’m voting for Barack Obama is that it’s either him or a police state – someone who’s carrying on policies that are clearly stated and directed at subverting liberty. He’s definitely the lesser of two evils.” ~ Naomi Wolf
- “Millions of people have to restore liberty and have to understand the danger and personal risk they face in a police state.” ~ Naomi Wolf
- “Since 9/11, the Bush administration has used that tragic event as a justification to rip up our constitution and our civil liberties. And I honestly believe that one or two 9/11s, and martial law will be declared in our country and we’re inching towards a police state.” ~ Michael Moore
-
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Venezuela has gone from being a democratic country 15 years ago to being totally not a democracy today. Usually that de-democratization doesn’t take the form of a heavy handed police state.” ~ David Frum
- “It’s very important to understand that 21st century authoritarian rule does not look like 20th century authoritarian rule. You’re not going to have people in parade ground formations. You’re not going to have a police state. You’re not going to people with decorative armbands bullying people on the sidewalks. And the leaders won’t stand at microphones for hours ranting at people. All of that is so 80 years ago.” ~ David Frum
- “[Ayn] Rand accepts that when she supports military conscription, even indirectly. Also, she starts her politics from the premise that the State must have police power. She fails to take into account the inevitability that once you start with police power you’re going to have a police State.” ~ Murray Bookchin
