Ernest Hemingway Quotes

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

History’s most important lesson is that it has not been possible to make coercion compatible with the truth.

An attempt to scrutinize men’s thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.

The National Socialist Party will prevent in the future, by force if necessary, all meetings and lectures which are likely to exercise a depressing influence on the German state.

In their efforts to discredit human freedom, the Putinites denounce the sins that may occur under the reign of liberty with the same ardor, the same sincerity, and the same purpose that animated their Soviet forebears.

If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you don't have a regime.

Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history.

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

You work your butt off and somebody says you can't have your record played because it offends them. Tyrants are made of such stuff.

When you have a person in power who punishes people for speaking their mind, it's truly dangerous.

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

Totalitarianism liquidates its internal enemies or smashes opposition as soon as it arises; it uses methods that are simple and infallible because they are undemocratic. But democracy can defend itself from within only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy.

Our political life is closed, and our freedoms usurped, and our people are oppressed, and fearful… if you don’t say what the ruler wants, you’re exiled beyond the sun.

Ideas are dangerous; and the traffic in them has been the concern of all dictators.

Political or religious dissenters are the plague of every totalitarian regime.

Enemy of the People

In a society where the individual is not free to pursue the truth, … there is neither progress, stability, nor security.

It was only a generation ago that we learned that the burning of books may precede the burning of people.

There are men—now in power in this country—who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression so long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

… to gag us from speaking truth, and discovering the tyrannies of bad men.