Robert M. Hutchins Quotes

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

The National Socialist Party will prevent in the future, by force if necessary, all meetings and lectures which are likely to exercise a depressing influence on the German state.

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

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

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

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

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

The more laws that governments pass, the less individual freedom there is. Any student of history will tell you that. Totalitarian countries ban pretty much everything.

Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.

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.

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.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism –-- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

I feel very sad that my personal freedom was taken away like this. I grew up under authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and one of the reasons I chose to move to the U. S. is that I didn’t want an officer to make me change my T-shirt. He said ‘You can’t wear a T-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a T-shirt that reads ‘I am a robber’ and going to a bank.’

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.

This is probably my last free statement through our news media, where the radio and television are already under the heel of the ruling political party of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. One would have thought radio and television were enough as propaganda tools.

In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and whenever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.

Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom.

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 revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

The surest way to make our youth suspect that there may be something in Communism would be for the government to outlaw it.

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

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.

In the Franco era, we couldn't defend our ideas.

Tayyip Erdogan wants to go beyond George W. Bush by making critical journalism and critics in the academy illegal. What will be the difference between him and a military government? Very little. I read his remarks on the effectiveness of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Well, yes. But then the AKP would have to ban all other political parties, close down all critical newspapers, burn the books critical of the regime and gas the Kurds to death...the final solution of the Kurdish 'problem.' Somehow I don't think he is about to do that.