A despot doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom — he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold. His gravest concern is lest gaiety, or truth in sheep’s clothing, somewhere gain a foothold, lest joy in some unguarded moment be unconfined.
E. B. White (1899–1985) American author, critic, humorist [Elwyn Brooks "Andy" White]
Essay (1939-01), “One Man’s Meat,” Harper’s Magazine, Vol. 178
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When collected in his book, One Man's Meat (1942), the essay was renamed "Salt Water Farm." Sometimes the excerpted third section of the essay is referred to as "The Duty of Writers."
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The only man for whom Hitler had “unqualified respect” was “Stalin the genius,” and while in the case of Stalin and the Russian regime we do not have (and presumably never will have) the rich documentary material that is available for Germany, we nevertheless know since Khrushchev’s speech before the Twentieth Party Congress that Stalin trusted only one man and that was Hitler.
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Origins of Totalitarianism, Part 3, ch. 10 “A Classless Society,” sec. 1 (1951)
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