Erica Jong Quotes

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

Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Most Hungarians know what it was to live in a dictatorship; some are old enough to have known both fascism and communism. No one wants to go back to that.

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable.

Dictators are as scared of books as they are of cannon.

... a step in the direction of tyranny.

A dictator ... must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

Such is the terror--the crushing fear--which is inspired by one man over that multitude, which now submits to his decrees with a zeal, apparently as ardent, as it is certainly abject and submissive. There is not a complaint heard. The calm and dark waters of despotism are never disturbed by the slightest ripple. Not a breath of free thought or manly speech passes over them, but they lie dead and deep, into which every vestige of the people's liberty and freedom has sunk and disappeared.

The one indisputable reality of dictatorship is that dissent, insult, and malevolent language do not go unpunished if it is allowed at all.

There's nothing to fear. I'm not a dictator.

I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control.

Even if the country is run by a Mussolini, free speech will find its way.

China is a heaven compared to North Korea.

I grew up under a dictatorship. I knew what it meant for people to not have the ability to freely express themselves.

I suppose anyone who calls a dictator a dictator is 'dangerous' and 'imbalanced.'

The North Korean regime really can control people. I think they are the best dictator in the whole planet.

As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.