Jung Chang Quotes

I mean, they censor your work when they're scared of it.

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.

Down through the centuries, this trick has been tried by various establishments throughout the world. They force people to get involved in the kind of examination that has only one aim and that is to stamp out dissent.

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

If I was afraid of being killed, I would never speak out against the government.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

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

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

Can someone within that society walk into the town square and say what they want without fear of being punished for his or her views? If so, then that society is a free society. If not, it is a fear society.

Heretics are no longer burned at the stake. But they are marginalized by cultural and educational institutions.

The more rulers strive to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately are they resisted; …. laws directed against opinions affect the generous minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright; so that they cannot be maintained without great peril to the state.

The National Socialist Party will prevent in the future, by force if necessary, all meetings and lectures which are likely to exercise a depressing influence on the German state.

Dissenters will become food for crocodiles.

Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined.

People like to quiet the speech of others.

The one indisputable reality of dictatorship is that dissent, insult, and malevolent language do not go unpunished if it is allowed at all.

I have no problem with free speech, but free speech and then silencing your opposition - boy, I have a problem with that.

Locking up dissenters does not reduce dissent - it fosters it.

As long as it is supported by Democratic politicians and by liberal Hollywood players, censorship is a useful tool to stifle dissent.

I think it's disingenuous for people to talk in their living rooms about government collapsing, the possibility of total anarchy, but when someone says it in public, it's so terrifying they have to persecute that person.

Everyone loses when voices get stifled.

Once you start choking the space for dissent in a democracy, people feel pushed to the wall and then it leads to further dissent and alienation.

The moment you start asking questions, you become public enemy number one.

I not only weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage.

When people are intimidated about having their own opinions, oppression is at hand.