Yaroslav Trofimov Quotes

I think the worst thing we can do is to concede to fanaticism its devotion, say. Well, you have to understand, these people are really fanatics, so we should back down from them. I think if journalists start doing that then they won't be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won't be practicing satire.

People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think. In fact, one can even get killed for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it.

Everything I give, pretty much, is public. Not every donor wants to - or is willing to get the kind of abuse and attacks that we do, or death threats, so they're not willing to have their names out. I think the other side is pushing for that because they want to intimidate people so they won't oppose it.

I understand that people are afraid. Because I think censorship is about fear. It's just fear being projected onto art.

....there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.

In a perfect world, there would be no censorship, because there would be no judgement. I find the hypocritical aspect disconcerting, to say the least. We can show people being murdered on television, but I'm not able to say "chickenshit" in public. At the same time, I understand that people are afraid. Because I think censorship is about fear. It's just fear being projected onto art.

If there were no controls on the internet - and I shudder to think at letting certain people have control of it. It is content related. Ultimately what they want to control and police is the content. They're liberals! They want to eliminate opposing points of view. They do it with political correctness, which is censorship. They do it in the Drive-By Media by simply ignoring all kinds of news that is not palatable or it conflicts with their worldview, they just ignore it and don't even cover it. It's inarguable.

Whenever people have trouble public speaking, it's because they are just thinking about themselves.

I don't think there's a problem. First of all, I don't think music turns people into social liabilities. Because you hear a lyric - there's no medical proof that a person hearing a lyric is going to act out the lyric. There's also no medical proof that if you hear any collection of vowels and consonants, that the hearing of that collection is going to send you to Hell.

Well, part of the thing is, like, what's the difference between censorship and social responsibility? I sometimes find that the whole censorship argument is used as a way for people to avoid the fact that they're like.

There is not a scintilla of evidence that the Russians even are responsible for the leak of all of those John Podesta emails to WikiLeaks. You may think that you've heard all these intelligence people running around saying that they have concluded that the Russians were trying to hack this and trying to hack that. That use of the word "conclusion," by the way, is kind of like the use of the word "claimed" by the Drive-By Media.

It's difficult to talk to people who whisper even at home, afraid of Americans eavesdropping on them. It's not a figure of speech, not a joke, I'm serious.

I think the reason people investigate the paranormal is because we are trying to overcome the mystery of death. That in and of itself is something that lives within every living person, everybody. We all experience death and we are forced to find out if that is just the end, which it is not. So what we do is, when we are experiencing a situation that maybe scary, it's almost now a sense of relief.

I hate those people that get up and they're amazing. I think you just have to be kind of wasted to go and do it.

If you don't know what you're being asked to do, make sure you clarify. I think people in every business are afraid to ask questions.

Yes, to me that's one of the most compelling fears in film noir and the psychological thriller genre - that fear of conspiracy. It's definitely something that I have a fear of - not being in control of your own life. I think that's something people can relate to, and those genres are most successful when they derive the material from genuine fears that people have.

We live in a world where in the movie you can disembowel someone in a youth hostel in Romania, but you can't show people having sex. I think it's weird.

One of the things I think the next president has to do is to stop fanning people's fears. If we spend all our time feeding the American people fear and conflict and division, then they become fearful and conflicted and divided. And if we feed them hope and we feed them reason and tolerance, then they will become tolerant and reasonable and hopeful.

There needs to be a public dawning - and it is beginning to dawn on some members of the public - that how science is practiced actually makes a difference in their lives. If evidence becomes optional, if ideological assertions or beliefs are just as good as scientifically vetted evidence, then their quality of life suffers. I think that's dawning on people. There's a level of concern unlike anything I've seen.

The experience of past ages may inform us, that when the circumstances of a people render them distressed, their rulers generally recur to severe, cruel, and oppressive measures. Instead of endeavoring to establish their authority in the affection of their subjects, they think they have no security but in their fear.

Everything has become very corporate and very careful. Before we had a real democracy going and there were a lot of freedoms and now there's this terrorism thing that everybody's focused on, which is really a boondoggle in my opinion. It's just an excuse to clamp down on people's free speech. And corporations intimidate people and everybody's gotten intimidated and that's really what it is, and they just keep going along. It's almost like - a little bit like that Charlie Chaplin movie, Modern Times, or 1984, Orwell

In our society, more and more, people are running around offended by syllables, even. People are afraid to say anything. It reminds me of the days of the old Soviet Union, where people would have to go into the bathroom to say what they were really thinking.

When people think you are speaking against them as a group, they try to shut it down out here.

It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence.

I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is OK, to speak out.