15 Fictional Governments That Make The United States Look Good

At least these guys agree on their terms of oppression.

15. Ray Radbury's Fahrenheit 451

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

14. Robert Harris's Fatherland

“Down in the cellar the Gestapo were licensed to practice was the Ministry of Justice called ‘heightened interrogation’. The rules had been drawn up by civilised men in warm offices and they stipulated the presence of a doctor.”

13. Robert A. Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”

12. Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron

"They remained suspended in air... and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

... Diana Moon Glampers... came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor."

11. Sybil Claiborne's In The Garden of Dead Cars

“You have to plant doubt […] It’s like planting a seed that takes time to germinate. It might look like nothing is happening, but then suddenly the doubt will flower into some kind of action […] Patience is what is needed. People need to hear the truth, not just once but again and again. That’s what the politics of change is all about, patience and repetition, until the truth sinks in.”

10. Yevgeny Zamyatin's We

“You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.”

9. Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”

8. Ayn Rand's Anthem

“Many men in the Homes of the Scholars have had strange new ideas in the past . . . but when the majority of their brother Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their ideas, as all men must.”

7. Alan Moore's V For Vendetta

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof.”

6. Franz Kafka's The Trial

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”

5. Koushun Takami's Battle Royale

“By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Physically, several seconds ago, mentally, ages ago.”

4. Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”

3. George Orwell's 1984

"We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent there will be no need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."

2. Orwell's Animal Farm

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”

1. Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”