Naomi Wolf Quotes

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

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

Totalitarianism liquidates its internal enemies or smashes opposition as soon as it arises; it uses methods that are simple and infallible because they are undemocratic. But democracy can defend itself from within only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy.

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.

The reason that democracies always defeat dictatorships is because they're open to debate. We should never allow Washington to say, 'Shut up, get in line and wave the flag.'

The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.

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

In our modern age - in the age of free information - I don't think there is any place for dictatorships.

The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.

We will not put a lid on opinions. On the contrary, it is more important than ever that political debates are open and free, even on the most difficult issues. Especially on the most difficult issues. The task is to encourage controversial debates in a form that strengthens democracy.

The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed.

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.

Having lived through the transition from totalitarianism, I am acutely mindful of the need to never take for granted the basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief that democracy brings.

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.

Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.

The Chinese people are not a new kind of human nature. Human nature in China is the same as it is elsewhere. When you start in a tyrannical regime to hand out freedom there is no place to draw that line and expect that line to hold. And so it’s only a matter of time before this regime comes down

The one reason we know that every totalitarian government must fail is that no totalitarian government is prepared to face the consequence of free universities.

Thank God we in Iran have neither the desire nor the need to suffer from democracy.

Our liberty cannot depend on the good intention of those in power.

There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.

We cannot have a society in which some dictator somewhere can impose censorship here in the United States.

In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own.... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.