Suppression of Dissent Quotes

The enemy of individuality is groupthink.

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

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

That is one of the characteristics of fascism, the idea that the state can provide all of the answers for everyone.

When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

Totalitarianism is neither left nor right, and within its empire both will perish. I was never a believer, but after seeing Czech Catholics persecuted during the Stalinist terror, I felt the deepest solidarity with them. What separated us, the belief in God, was secondary to what united us. In Prague, they hanged the Socialists and the priests. Thus a fraternity of the hanged was born.

The Chinese have made a faustian pact with the government, agreeing to forsake demands for political and intellectual freedom in exchange for more material comfort. They live prosperous lives in which any expression of pain is forbidden.

The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as "Communists" or "Fascists" by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.

What seems fair enough against a squalid huckster of bad liquor may take on a different face, if used by a government determined to suppress political opposition under the guise of sedition

We know what totalitarian looks like, we know what oppression looks like, we know what the dumb culture of totalitarianism smells like. This is it! It's happening now, and the future of the world is being decided. So, get out there, make your own sites, take action!

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests, and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I'm from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?

Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right.

Tayyip Erdogan wants to go beyond George W. Bush by making critical journalism and critics in the academy illegal. What will be the difference between him and a military government? Very little. I read his remarks on the effectiveness of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Well, yes. But then the AKP would have to ban all other political parties, close down all critical newspapers, burn the books critical of the regime and gas the Kurds to death...the final solution of the Kurdish 'problem.' Somehow I don't think he is about to do that.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.

There is fascism, leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol, into smartness and yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war. It means change without hope. Our immediate duty - in that tinkering which is the only useful form of action in our leaky old tub - our immediate duty is to stop it.

I was shocked when I heard that Farghadani had been sentenced to 12 years and nine months in prison on spurious charges, as Amnesty International notes, of 'spreading propaganda against the system,' 'insulting members of the parliament through paintings' and 'insulting the Supreme Leader' with her cartoon.

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

The family is the American fascism.

The integrity of China was more important than [the people] in Tiananmen Square.