Jim Goad Quotes

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

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.

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted

Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.

The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.

Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.

Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

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

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

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

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

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

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.

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom.

Once you “volunteer” and engage in self-censorship something happens to your conscience.

It is pretty safe to assume that any given censor is a fool. The very fact that he is a censor indicates that.

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

We can't let censorship take over.

The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

There, where one burns books... one, in the end, burns men.

Let’s be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason. What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can’t be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America’s campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who’re supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?

Where books are burned in the end people will be burned too.

You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.

In the West, you don't get in any trouble if you tell the truth, but you still can't do it. Not only can't you tell the truth, you can't think the truth. It's just so deeply embedded, deeply instilled, that without any meaningful coercion it comes out the same way it does in a totalitarian state.