Anna Quindlen Quotes

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.

Historically the Puritans left England to escape religious persecution, and they promptly turned around and started persecuting the people they didn't agree with - the scarlet letter A, and the stocks and the dunking board came from that. That puritanism is still there.

Political correctness means nothing to me. Nothing. It's the new Puritanism, darling. Preventing us from expressing ourselves.

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

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.

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.

That’s the trouble with inquisitors and censors. They become fascinated by what they deplore.

What should we think of a Southern city or state that forbade a film of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ to be presented?

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

How odd that the proponents of free expression think 'free' only applies to them.

If City Hall started projecting swastikas, no one would say 'You know what? Free speech.' People would say that is wrong.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

The growing tide of anti-Semitism shocks the conscious of everyone who values freedom, and the ugly, hateful acts particularly stain the character of democracies where liberty and religious freedom are supposed to be respected.

It's this upside-down world that we live in where we afford political correctness to the most intolerant group of individuals on the planet.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Over the years, my marks on paper have landed me in all sorts of courts and controversies - I have been comprehensively labelled; anti-this and anti-that, anti-social, anti-football, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-science, anti-republican, anti-American, anti-Australian - to recall just an armful of the antis.

We should silence anyone who opposes the right to freedom of speech.

I keep attacking the villains, the know-nothings, the people who want to take our freedoms away.

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

I won't ever got to a place that's racist, and I will tell everybody else not to and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist.

The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with.

Quite frankly, I think political correctness is the worst form of censorship. You're not allowed to speak your mind unless you're black, or unless you're a terrorist, or unless you're an Arab or a minority people. Then you can say what you like. But if you are like a lot of us you are not supposed to say certain things.

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.

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

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.