Jim Butcher Quotes

Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters.

No, I'm not politically correct. I never wanted to be, and I never will be.

I have certain things that I stand for, certain things that I believe in, and if you don't like it and you tell me to go to hell, I think that's your God-given right as a fan. It's one of those deals where I'm that one guy who is outside of that realm of good guy, bad guy. I'm just me, and it elicits a response both positive and negative.

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Dissent is the mark of freedom.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

This hetero - normative behavior and herd mentality is dangerous. It's okay to be different.

All isolation is wrong so say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the herd.

Say what you think / Love who you love.

To live in accordance with how one thinks. Be yourself and don't try to impose your criteria on the rest. I don't expect others to live like me. I want to respect people's freedom, but I defend my freedom. And that comes with the courage to say what you think, even if sometimes others don't share those views.

I've always liked what Thomas More said in Utopia, which is that in Utopia every person is allowed their own lifestyle and religion but no one is allowed to stand on a soapbox and tell others that theirs is right. I thought that was brilliant. Brilliant.

There's bad apples in whatever way you want to group people - doesn't matter if it's religious, political or social. The big mistake is generalizing.

A love of neighbor manifests itself in the tolerance not only of opinions of others but, what is more important, of the essence and uniqueness of others, when we subscribe to that religious philosophy of life that insists that God has made each man and woman an individual sacred personality endowed with a specific temperament, created with differing needs, hungers, dreams. This is a variegated, pluralistic world where no two stars are the same and every snowflake has its own distinctive pattern. God apparently did not want a regimented world of sameness.

A person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door.

The constant pressure to bring about conformity is a dangerous thing.

Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

I’m not going to censor myself to comfort your ignorance

An artist, if he's unselfish and passionate, is always a living protest. Just to open his mouth is to protest: against conformism, against what is official, public, or national, what everyone else feels comfortable with, so the moment he opens his mouth, an artist is engaged, because opening his mouth is always scandalous.

Whatever an individual chooses to do with themselves, long as it doesn't affect me and they're respectful with it, I don't care what they do. Because I'm not perfect and I have flaws, so who would I be to be judgmental?

They said my friends were just an unruly mob, and I should get a hair cut and get a new job.

It's fine to indulge yourself so long as you don't try and foist it on the rest of the world.

I'm turned on by diversity. I'm turned on by things that are different. I like different animals, I like different ways of travel, and I like different people.

I have defended democracy, human rights, and brotherhood between peoples. And I'll keep doing so for as long as I live.

As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.

A citizen sticks to conventions, does whatever is social. Artists, of course, must reject all conventions. I see no differently in reconciling the best of both of these worlds.