Richard Armour Quotes

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

Before Hitler could kill 6 million Jews, he had to burn 6 million books.

Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

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

There, where one burns books... one, in the end, burns men.

You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.

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.

We see book-burning as a crime against humanity: it's intolerable because books represent a kind of freedom to us.

The National Socialist Party will prevent in the future, by force if necessary, all meetings and lectures which are likely to exercise a depressing influence on the German state.

The poisoning of the civil discourse always accompanies totalitarian movements.

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.

If you know anything, deny, deny, deny. I want to save Fascism.

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

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Totalitarianism is not about some state that appears out of nowhere and suddenly is all-powerful. There can't be any such thing. Totalitarianism starts when the difference between your public life and your private life is effaced.

Under Lenin, hardly less than under Stalin, historians harbored critical opinions at their peril. The writing, let alone the publication, of political diaries was virtually impossible.

During the entire communist era, communist ideology was imposed on children. That was Bolshevism.

When demagogues and dictators ban art, this is the reason: art is the great solvent of obedient fundamentalism.

Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.

This was but a prelude; where books are burnt human-beings will be burnt in the end

Free speech isn't dead in Germany and Italy, merely the speakers.

I don't believe you can contain ideas by military force.

Torch every book. Burn every page. Char every word to ash. Ideas are incombustible. And therein lies your real fear.

Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.