
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

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.