Kalle Lasn Quotes

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick.

They have been talking about a dictatorship and they were right because there's a dictatorship and there's a government that has been fighting that dictatorship, the dictatorship of the media.

This is probably my last free statement through our news media, where the radio and television are already under the heel of the ruling political party of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. One would have thought radio and television were enough as propaganda tools.

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government's word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.

Despite all the gains for democracy in the world, in many countries anyone who wants to publish truths unwelcome to the government risks suppression and criminal punishment.

I have lived under totalitarian Communism, so I prize freedom as much as anyone and have long fought for freedom of conscience and speech.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

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

As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

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.

Governments and reactionary groups resort to nationalism, victimization, and suppression to keep foreign or offending speech at bay.

In the U.S., the country that has always been lecturing the world about the value of freedoms - of freedom of speech, of everyone's right to speak up - the U.S. has now become a beacon, a leader, in this movement to shut everyone up. That's so disappointing.

I believe in it so passionately because anywhere you look in the world, where governments become too big or become authoritarian, speech and expression is one of the first fundamental freedoms to go.

This bill reminds me of the tactics of the former Soviet Union - and we know how successful that was.

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

Whether it's Baidu or Chinese versions of YouTube or Sina or Sohu, Chinese Internet sites are getting daily directives from the government telling them what kinds of content they cannot allow on their site and what they need to delete.

It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false.

China's censorship and propaganda systems may be complex and multilayered, but they are obviously not well coordinated.

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

The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to have. In liberal democracies around the world, this decision has generally been greeted with enthusiasm.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.