Anthony Lewis Quotes

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.

There's always some kind of blacklist throughout history. But the difference is, in America they usually let you live.

Dissidents are despicable parasites

The government has muffled the voices that best represent the most significant segments of society.

It is necessary to be very intelligent in the work of oppression.

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

Get up in one of our industrial centers today and say that two and two make four, and if there is any financial interest concerned in maintaining that two and two make five, the police will bash your head in.

Political correctness never rears its ugly head independently. It always shows up as a series of actions designed, to this observer, to crush the souls of those blessed with common sense.

Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.

The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

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

An understanding of Sor Juana's work must include an understanding of the prohibitions her work confronts. Her speech leads us to what cannot be said, what cannot be said to an orthodoxy, the orthodoxy to a tribunal, and the tribunal to a sentence.

It's very worrying at this time in the world that any point of view should be prohibited, that's banned, there are heretics that should be burned at the stake.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

Our schools too often want to shut people up so they can't talk about real solutions. People who think differently tend to clam up because they think something is wrong with their ideas.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Whenever anyone challenges anything, the powers that be try to paint them as extremists or radicals or whatever. And I think that's actually nonsense.

Tolerance is a one-way street in the Age of Obama. 'Choice' is in the eye (and iron fist) of the First Amendment usurper.

Some people still believe you should just fall in line with what's going on - and that's scary. It makes a mockery of freedom of speech.

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.