Rocco Buttiglione Quotes

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.

It is well known that the Soviet Union closely regulates all organizations and movements, including religion.

[…] the underlying problem is the soft progressive totalitarianism that seeks to compel submission to its creed. A powerful cultural establishment, now reinforced by political dominion in Washington, won’t tolerate deviance. Instead of learning to live at peace with the reality of pluralism, the essence of a successful democracy, it demands concordance with all of its ever-changing strictures. It ascribes dissent not to honest disagreement, differing experiences, diverse intellectual traditions or the basic human instinct for autonomy, but to malice and ignorance.

As a reader, I've always been interested in dystopian novels like 'Nineteen Eighty-four'.

I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

The Thought Police: To censor and protect.

When state and religion are one, religion becomes a means for the powerful to remain in power.

There is social intimidation by the self-appointed brigades of the thought police… they exist in every society, whether they are of the religious, nationalistic or atheistic variety. Dogmatists, who are convinced that they know better, that only the way they think is acceptable and who would deprive others of their right to hear differing and discordant voices.. They try to achieve this by either silencing the author or scaring away the public.

I've always been interested in those Orwellian dystopian novels, like 'Fahrenheit 451,' 'Brave New World,' and obviously Orwell's '1984.'

I think that we have strayed into very dangerous territory where people are not allowed to express a negative opinion.

Jews have been harmed by the threats to freedom of opinion and debate, the punishments for candor, and the decline in rigorous standards in the academy that have accompanied progressive hegemony, which insists upon the sacrosanct status of affirmative action and other policies favored by the left.

There are so many people that are offended by debate and free speech that sometimes governments cower. It's just way easier to play into the hands of people who are totalitarian.

Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.

In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science because it was for the good of the Communist Party.

Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again.

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

Surveillance breeds conformity.

Criticism in the universities, I'll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It's Stalinism without Stalin.

Those nations that say it's a crime to preach your religion are making a terrible mistake. All they're doing is driving underground other forms of spiritual intuitions and practices.

Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior.

I think that when we start thought-policing people and idea-policing people, then that's crossing a line. And I think, you know, everybody's so afraid of this imaginary line of thought police that they forget their own personal safety.

Since Castro took power, the Cuban people have been denied basic human freedoms. No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no political freedom. And the regime uses brutality and violence to suppress these freedoms and impose its will.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

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.