Mark Steyn Quotes

If Mumia Abu-Jamal has nothing important to say, why are so many powerful people trying to shut him up?

Who is it that said that 'you have not converted a man because you have silenced him?' This is true of the use of the military on people.

The most problematic word in America is the word "problematic." It's a wuss word used by people to silence language without actually saying that they want to silence you. They don't want to go full fascist.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.

Some people need a fig-leaf on their mouths.

There are very significant ways around America on how to break its grip, which is, of course, a way to exclude dissenting voices before tens of millions of people.

The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences from social ostracism to vocational defenestration upon those who refuse to be silenced.

We now live in a country with a thousand political prisoners, a country where each week there are new trials, where people are put in jail because they liked something on the Internet.

I don't know why, but I always feel a kind of necessity to write things that are beyond acceptance, that are too offensive or something. For people to read them and say, Ha-ha-ha, very funny. No, we can't print that.

It's very difficult to speak to a large group of people these days and not offend someone.

People always say you can't win if you don't play

When St Genesius, the patron saint of actors, refused to act in a Roman play that ridiculed Christianity, the legend goes, the producers executed him. It reminds some people of Broadway today.

I'm sure there are people in Hollywood, whose main drive in film is to make money, who will feel that any use of the word hijacking or any reference to anything violent or remotely associated with the terrible tragedy that occurred will lose customers for them. And that will be the only criterion that will matter and so they'll force the minions that work for them to remove these things from their movies, or not make movies about that subject.

That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose.

A great defensive effort. The one thing we have to do is make it hard for people to beat us. We're not worried about winning and losing, we just have to make the game hard

I had to go on TV with the president of the Catholic League, which is not an official organization at all, just a lot of Catholics, or maybe it's just this guy. He demanded to de-fund art completely and argued that taxpayers should not pay for it. I said people who represent the Catholic Church shouldn't talk about taxes.

When people are intimidated about having their own opinions, oppression is at hand.

People would say I never censor. As Billy Crystal says, 'I don't have that button.'

Politically correct enforcement that's out there in our society has tightened things down to the point where people just walk on eggshells and they are afraid to address things that are really on their mind.

"Win" is about the specific use of specific words to connect you to your employer or employees, politicians to voters - and frankly, to help people win debates, have discussions, and improve the level of communication.

Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile.

I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I sure as hell don't want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our Internet.

My parents taught me a long time ago that you win in life with people, and that's important, because if you hang with winners, you stand a great chance of being a winner.

One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.

Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It's also for people who you think of as reprehensible.