The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.
Hannah Arendt, interview with French writer Roger Errera (1974), New York Review of Books.
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Hannah Arendt
