Anna Politkovskaya Quotes

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

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

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

I mean, they censor your work when they're scared of it.

Dissidents are despicable parasites

In 1917, with the Bolsheviks, you had intra-elite conversations about what the country should be doing. You had arguments. Under Stalin, you didn’t really. But then after Stalin, you started having those arguments again.

When people are intimidated about having their own opinions, oppression is at hand.

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.

In Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies.

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

Many a time freedom has been rolled back - and always for the same sorry reason: fear.

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.

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.

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

A functioning police state needs no police.

Only the suppressed word is dangerous.

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.

In most of the countries where the people don’t like their government, we are now allowed to ask whether people like their government.

… to gag us from speaking truth, and discovering the tyrannies of bad men.

There is no functional difference between censorship and the threat of censorship.

Dissenters will become food for crocodiles.

There will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment.

People like to quiet the speech of others.

There are no longer opponents of Putin's policy, and if there are, they are mentally ill and should be sent to prophylactic health examination.