Lawrence Ferlinghetti Quotes

Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

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.

I grew up under a dictatorship. I knew what it meant for people to not have the ability to freely express themselves.

There are so many people that are offended by debate and free speech that sometimes governments cower. It's just way easier to play into the hands of people who are totalitarian.

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

Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.

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.

It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice.

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

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.

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.

a jackbooted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today.

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.

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

Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned.

Dissidents are despicable parasites

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

An extreme reflection of the dangers confronting modern social development is the growth of racism, nationalism, and militarism and, in particular, the rise of demagogic, hypocritical, and monstrously cruel dictatorial police regimes…. These tragic developments have always derived from the struggle of egotistical and group interests, the struggle for unlimited power, suppression of intellectual freedom, a spread of intellectually simplified, narrow-minded mass myths.

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.

Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

Governments and reactionary groups resort to nationalism, victimization, and suppression to keep foreign or offending speech at bay.

We are going through a fascistic time..