Dave Brubeck Quotes

For a writer, personal freedom is not so important. It is not individual freedom that guarantees the greatness of literature; otherwise, writers in democratic countries would be superior to all others. Some of the greatest writers wrote under dictatorship - Shakespeare, Cervantes.

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.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

… new authoritarians are conducting an epoch-making historical experiment as to whether regimes that allow private freedoms can endure when they deny their citizens public freedom.

We must have a free press. If we are to maintain democracxy as we know it, we must have a free and adversarial press.... That's how dictoators get power [by intimidating, restriciting and censoring the press.]

The government that has imprisoned more journalists than any other in the world was democratically elected.

If you want to preserve - I'm very serious now - if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started.

One doesn't want one's democracy to behave like a dictatorial or fascistic police. One doesn't.

It's not mainland China that rubs me up the wrong way, it is the dictatorship that rubs me up the wrong way. It's the freedom that we Chinese people are not allowed that rubs me up the wrong way.

Whatever I read about Emergency as a part and process of my film, I can say, as a citizen of a democratic country called India, I am certainly not 'for' Emergency, a decision that snatched away the normalcy of human life for 21 months.

Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shootings of hostages, etc.

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

Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it.

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

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

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.

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

Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom.

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

It's true that General Musharraf opposes my return, seeing me as a symbol of democracy in the country. He is comfortable with dictatorship. I hope better sense prevails.

The raids on Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the Adenauer Foundation, and other groups helping Egyptians move toward respect for democratic politics and human rights were of a piece with the practices of Hosni Mubarak - only bolder and more repressive.

When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation - namely, life, liberty and justice for all.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise.

Routine is a declivity down which many governments slide, and routine says that freedom of the press is dangerous.