Shelby Steele Quotes

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.

P.C. is just too Big Brother - telling me how I should act and feel.

We're led to believe everybody opposes it and disagrees with political correctness, but yet everybody's scared to death of it. So who is it? Well, it's the power structure wherever you happen to be.

I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.

There is social intimidation by the self-appointed brigades of the thought police… they exist in every society, whether they are of the religious, nationalistic or atheistic variety. Dogmatists, who are convinced that they know better, that only the way they think is acceptable and who would deprive others of their right to hear differing and discordant voices.. They try to achieve this by either silencing the author or scaring away the public.

Political correctness never rears its ugly head independently. It always shows up as a series of actions designed, to this observer, to crush the souls of those blessed with common sense.

For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.

It's very worrying at this time in the world that any point of view should be prohibited, that's banned, there are heretics that should be burned at the stake.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Political correctness has become a straightjacket.

Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.

Political Correctness doesn't change us, it shuts us up.

Some people still believe you should just fall in line with what's going on - and that's scary. It makes a mockery of freedom of speech.

Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.

You're not allowed to step out of whatever the rules are, politically, or socially, and they'll get you for it, they'll hunt you down. That's the really frightening thing.

Any society that starts forbidding certain words or expressions is a society you should be wary about, whether it's the KGB or social consensus that enforces it.

In a land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness.

Political correctness is tyranny with manners.

It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

Surveillance breeds conformity.