Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Quotes

No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear.

I got a feeling about political correctness. I hate it. It causes us to lie silently instead of saying what we think.

The view that honesty is something, and even a virtue, belongs, it is true, to those private opinions which are forbidden in this age of public opinions.

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.

If I were to say what I really think I would be arrested or shut away in a lunatic asylum. Come on, I am sure that it would be the same for everyone.

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

No member of any society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what the society holds to be true.

The public does not necessarily want to hear, much less to act on unsettling or disturbing findings… censorship can be, and is frequently supported by the majority of the population.

If printers (publishers) only printed that which everyone liked, there would be very little printed

I think there are ways in which we censor ourselves; that's the most dangerous kind of censorship - that's how hegemony works.

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

...Americans...automatically equate dissension with disloyalty. They view any criticism of our existing social, economic, and political forms, as sedition and subversion. ...(" The growing reluctance of Americans to criticize, and their increasing tendency to condemn those who, in ever dwindling numbers, will still voice dissent") is disturbing, deplorable, and truly dangerous.

Silence is so often applauded and those who speak out are often called tasteless.

Partly, I'm worried that no one is saying anything because they are afraid of being seen as politically correct.

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.

Why do we not hear the truth? Because we do not speak it.

Truth is always in danger of being sacrificed on the altars of good taste and social stability.

I do not believe that the tendency is to make men and women brave and glorious when you tell them that there are certain ideas upon certain subjects that they must never express; that they must go through life with a pretence as a shield; that their neighbors will think much more of them if they will only keep still; and that above all is a God who despises one who honestly expresses what he believes.

People who know the truth have no business to allow the powers of darkness to silence them on any point that matters.

The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.

I'm sure even in America, where you have, like, free speech people self-censor themself. And it's not - it happens because of different reasons. Because maybe it's politically incorrect, it doesn't have to really to be put in jail.

The truth is always modern and there never comes a time when it is safe to give it voice.

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its "pure" form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him.