Linda Colley Quotes

I know things, but I shut my mouth. They don't want me to speak, so I don't speak.

The power of lying is much less than the power of what is not to be discussed.

To try to be authentic these days, to ask questions of the people in power - it's difficult. This administration has evolved new techniques to handle people like me. Their strategy, in a word, is simple: ignore them.

Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

Silence coerced by law—the argument of force in its worst form.

The public never ought to have become aware of this matter.

I had no idea that we were saying anything important until they told us to stop.

Okay, that really shouldn't have happened. And we’re not going to talk about that, right? Ever?” “Right,” she said. She felt like there was light dripping from her fingertips. Spilling out of her toes. She felt full of light, in fact, warm buttery sunlight. “Never happened.” He opened his mouth, then closed it, and closed his eyes. “Claire—” “I know.” “Lock the door,” he said.

Politically correct is the language of cowardice.

There are things I cannot say.

Daddy always said you only explained things to the people that actually mattered.

A Conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words.

Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.

Small things become small folks.

We are all important, but we are not indispensable.

None of it meant anything, and all of it was important.

All men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility.

Those who have tried meekness know the importance of being important.

What you don’t know, you can’t tell. Or made to tell.

Everyone on this island wants something kept quiet. I want to roar

The only thing you must never speak of is your happiness.

Lying on the front passenger seat, as if it didn't matter, was Rose's Diary. It Mattered.

It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.

All those layers of silence upon silence.