Alexander Meiklejohn Quotes

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.

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.

It was only a generation ago that we learned that the burning of books may precede the burning of people.

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

It is not only under Nazi rule that police excesses are inimical to freedom. It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.

Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

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

We must ask the high cadres ... When you suppressed the rights of others to express freely their political views, did you secure your own?

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

Despite all the gains for democracy in the world, in many countries anyone who wants to publish truths unwelcome to the government risks suppression and criminal punishment.

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

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

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

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.

Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The freedom to express yourself without fear - that perhaps is something we in the U.S. take for granted. It's almost inconceivable to think we would be afraid to express our opinions or thoughts, but that's not true for all parts of the world now, and certainly not before World War II.

History’s most important lesson is that it has not been possible to make coercion compatible with the truth.

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

Only the suppressed word is dangerous.