Intolerance of Dissent Quotes

Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined.

Why do Republicans fear debate? For the same reason baloney fears the slicer.

Turn a Christian society into an established church and it is no longer a voluntary assembly for the worship of God; it is a powerful corporation full of such sentiments and passions as usually distinguish these bodies: a dread of innovation, an attachment to abuses, a propensity to tyranny and oppression.

Academia is ruled by a pathological herd mentality. Stick out, and be prepared to get ostracized.

People tend not to want to question dogma. But I'm afraid of dogma.

Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.

Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and will always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.

I've been no-platformed from every university with a strong Islamic faith community.

Inside many liberals is a totalitarian screaming to get out. They don't like to have another point of view in the room that they don't squash and the way they try to squash it is by character assassination and name calling.

Liberal arts colleges have traditionally provided a forum for debating ideas. Avoiding controversy and 'playing it safe' by not inviting - or disinviting - speakers with 'controversial' views stifles debate.

Piety is oppressive. It takes all the air out of thought.

The Enlightenment attacked religion - Christianity, mainly - for two reasons: that it was a set of ideological delusions, and that it was a system of institutional oppression, with immense powers of persecution and intolerance.

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.

The tendency of all strong governments has always been to suppress liberty, partly in order to ease the processes of rule, partly from sheer disbelief in innovation.

The near-total control of the most prestigious universities and colleges by intolerant extremists of the left is breeding not only generations of entitled little authoritarians but legions of apologists for violence against their own perceived enemies.

Sadly, in the highest levels of economic thought in government, questions are not tolerated. It is as if we're dealing with the binary thinking of a fundamentalist religion.

The tale is one of an evil time, When souls were fettered and thought was crime, And heresy's whisper above its breath Meant shameful scourging and bonds and death!

Offendedness is just about the last shared moral currency in our country. And, I'm sorry, but it's really annoying. We don't discuss ideas or debate arguments, we try to figure out who is most offended.

As long as it is supported by Democratic politicians and by liberal Hollywood players, censorship is a useful tool to stifle dissent.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

People may believe that there can be a society where dissent is not permitted, but which is nonetheless not a fear society because everyone agrees with one another and therefore no one wants to dissent.

I never had a spirit-breaking, soul-destroying religion drummed into me.

Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that.

Within orthodoxy, there is always a danger of faith collapsing into fear.

It’s true the Puritans themselves fled intolerance, but once they established themselves in America, they set up their own brutally intolerant regime.