Wei Jingsheng Quotes

I grew up under a dictatorship. I knew what it meant for people to not have the ability to freely express themselves.

Some people only speak of freedom of speech while they're out of power. Once they're in power, they're ruthless in suppressing the rights of others.

If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you don't have a regime.

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

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

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

When you have a person in power who punishes people for speaking their mind, it's truly dangerous.

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.

But please know, whether you believe campaign contributions are speech or property, that I learned to love very dearly the right of free expression when I lived without that freedom for a while a long time ago.

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.

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

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

The position of Princes is no doubt difficult in these times, but it would be much less so if they would behave honorably and straightforwardly, giving the people gradually those privileges which would satisfy all the reasonable and well-intentioned, and would weaken the power of the Red Republicans; instead of that, reaction and a return to all the tyranny and oppression is the cry and the principle—and all papers and books are being seized and prohibited, as in the days of Metternich!..

The non-democratic governments of petro-states, … use the wealth of at their disposal to resist pressure for more democratic government. In effect, they bribe the people they rule, persuading these citizens to forgo political liberty and the right to decide who governs them.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. It is time to get fierce.

If winning is the only value, why debate when you can suppress?

Without democracy freedom is a chimera

The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise.

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.

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.