David Mamet Quotes

Suppressing ideas never makes them go away.

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.

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

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.

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.

Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds.

We should silence anyone who opposes the right to freedom of speech.

I shall stand for freedom of thought and expression in a place where it has been trampled and penalized.

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.

And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history.

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

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

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

The policy of repression of ideas cannot work and has never worked.

Sasha, aren’t you a good communist? How can you allow so much ideological freedom? Do something!.

You ought not in a free country to lay a tax on the expression of political opinion.

An attempt to scrutinize men’s thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.

There are men—now in power in this country—who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression so long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

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.

Once you “volunteer” and engage in self-censorship something happens to your conscience.