Howard Jacobson Quotes

The whole earth was of one language and one speech.

The university has become so stultified since the sixties. There is so much you can't do at the university. You can't say this, you can't do that, you can't think this, and so forth. In many ways, I'm free to range as widely as I do intellectually precisely because I'm not at a university. The tiresome Chicanos would be after me all the time. You know: "We saw your piece yesterday, and we didn't like what you said," or, "You didn't sound happy enough," or, "You didn't sound proud enough."

I think what we have in this country is a little more dangerous in a way because it can't be seen fully. It's sorta internal censorship. We censor each other.

Political correctness kills discussion.

Criticism in the universities, I'll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It's Stalinism without Stalin.

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

A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness.

I lived near Santa Cruz for ten years, and the whole time, it bothered me what an exclusionary definition of 'inclusion' was in force. Social censure was applied to those who expressed unpopular or uncomfortable ideas.

The core problem in our society is political correctness.

Demands for solidarity can quickly turn into demands for groupthink, making it difficult to express nuance.

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

Some people still believe you should just fall in line with what's going on - and that's scary. It makes a mockery of freedom of speech.

I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it's instant death to creativity.

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

I'm afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same.

A big part of the problem that we face today is that our children have been taught at schools that every idea is right, that no one should criticize others' positions, no matter how odious.

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

The committee will be composed of open-minded people who agree with me.

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.

Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

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

This epidemic of student demands for 'safe places' to protect against threatening words and ideas would make a great science fiction film, but unbelievably, events seem to be outpacing the political imagination.

The PC rebellion is about a reaction against the media academic complex, which tells us what to say - or else.

American colleges are now increasingly reflexive in maintaining politically correct dialogue over controversy, and some say universities have lost sight of education's ultimate purpose.