Jim Jefferies Quotes

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.

Team Obama is exploiting the power of high government office to intimidate lawful, peaceful contributors who support limited-government causes.

The number of illegal activities were so large that one was bound to come out and lead to the uncovering of the others. Nixon was too willing to use the power of government to settle scores and get even with enemies.

… to gag us from speaking truth, and discovering the tyrannies of bad men.

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

During Wilson’s presidency, he followed through on an expansive view of Presidential power, suppressing domestic dissent and subversion in a manner that exceeded Dick Cheney’s wildest dreams.

Given an opportunity, Modi has violated the freedom of press both in letter and spirit. He destroys freedom of the press whenever he gets a chance.

We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial -whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.

Words are heavy in Turkey, and every writer, every poet and every journalist knows that, because of a word, because of a sentence, because of a tweet or even a retweet, you can be sued, you can be demonized by the media and you can even land in prison.

None but the dead have free speech.

Where there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.

Rappers shouldn't have to file taxes because they itemize everything they own in songs.

If Milo [Yiannopoulos] were a liberal, he could say whatever and then some, and he wouldn't be addressing Conservative Political Action Conference, he would be emceeing the Oscars.

In the Soviet Union you weren't allowed to speak out against the government. In the US you cannot speak out against sponsors.

There is a point where political correctness becomes an acid that erodes freedom.

Some people only speak of freedom of speech while they're out of power. Once they're in power, they're ruthless in suppressing the rights of others.

My mother lives in Moscow, and I would like to visit her. Now she always has to travel to Finland or a Baltic country to meet me. But I have to expect that my papers would be confiscated in Moscow immediately, and that they would harass my family. I can still have more impact in the West with my books and lectures.

Whenever citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government, writers are rountinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies.

In Germany, you would be hanged if you cracked a joke about Hitler and you would be killed by the state if you were insane in a project of euthanasia.

The insolence of authority is endeavoring to substitute money for ideas.

When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign - a bad sign mostly for literature. But it is also a bad sign when they don't want to hear the word mentioned.

Two Soviets . . . were talking to each other. And one of them asked, "What's the difference between the Soviet Constitution and the United States Constitution?" And the other one said, "That's easy. The Soviet Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of gathering. The American Constitution guarantees freedom after speech and freedom after gathering."

In communist countries, you execute your poets. In the free world, the poets execute themselves.

The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.

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