# Quote — Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

> "[E]ternal vigilance is the price of liberty,"...We see ourselves as a city on the hill, a stronghold for democracy, looking for threats from abroad. But the sense of the saying was entirely different: that human nature is such that American democracy must be defended from Americans who would exploit its freedoms to bring about its end.

- Author: [Timothy Snyder](https://www.leafyquotes.com/timothy-snyder.md)
- Book: [On Tyranny](https://www.leafyquotes.com/timothy-snyder/on-tyranny.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Timothy_D._Snyder#On_Tyranny_(2017)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/timothy-snyder/on-tyranny/e-ternal-vigilance-is-the

## More from this book

> Fascists rejected reason... denying objective truth in favor of glorious myth articulated by leaders who claimed to give voice to the people.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/timothy-snyder/on-tyranny/fascists-rejected-reason.md)

> Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/timothy-snyder/on-tyranny/americans-today-are.md)

> Since the American colonies declared their independence... [m]any... democracies... failed, in circumstances that in some important respects resemble our own.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/timothy-snyder/on-tyranny/since-the-american.md)