Fear of Expression Quotes

Who, with tame cowardice familiar grown, would hear my thoughts, but fear to speak their own.

An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.

If no one speaks out for [young readers], if they don’t speak out for themselves, all they’ll get for required reading will be the most bland books available. Instead of finding the information they need at the library, instead of finding novels that illuminate life, they will find only those materials to which nobody could possibly object... In this age of censorship I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced — writers’ voices, teachers’ voices, students’ voices — and all because of fear.

It's impossible to put a video online without hoards of anonymous men picking apart your appearance or saying especially cruel things. It works to silence women who shouldn't be scared of sharing their opinions with others.

I think people are afraid to express their opinions half the time.

Pakistan is an anomaly in the Islamic world, in the sense that there is a free press, which is amazing. I can't think of another Islamic country where the press is so free….one cannot claim that there is no fear. There is fear, but more and more people are saying what they want to say

Nothing cuts deeper than when another person says exactly what you're afraid to say out loud.

I think people are frightened of saying what they think, and I think that's a bad thing for society.

I'm terrified of losing my voice.

Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.

And I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.

Maybe every couple lived in the gaps between conversations, unable to say the important things for fear they had already been said, or couldn't be said; maybe every relationship started over every time two people came together.

Where the hand of tyranny is long we do not see the lips of men open with laughter.

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.

Today's tragedy in Paris reminds us very viscerally that it's a right that some people are inexplicably forced to die for. So it's very important tonight that I express that everybody who works at our comedy show, all of us are terribly sad for the families and people of France and anybody in the world tonight who now has to think twice before making a joke. It's not the way it's supposed to be.

In general, literature is a natural adversary of totalitarianism. Tyrannical governments all view literature in the same way: as their enemy. I lived for a long time in a totalitarian state, and I know firsthand that horror.

What I think, a lot of people think. They're just too afraid to say it.

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear.

We live in a country where we're supposed to have freedom of the press and religious freedom, but I think to some degree, there's a sense of fear in America today, that if you say the wrong thing, what some people will consider what is wrong, if you step out of line, if you dissent, whether you be an entertainer, that somehow and some way this government or the forces to be will come down on you.

I think that if you use the so-called "strong words" you'll get your point across faster and you can save a lot of beating around the bush. Why are people afraid of words? Sometimes the dumbest thing that gets said makes the point for you.

Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense - the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen.

But the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

Maybe there is something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters.

I was afraid to express myself for a while.