Mark Bray Quotes

Even if the country is run by a Mussolini, free speech will find its way.

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.

All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce obedience by prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their power. The swastika is only one example of many in recent history.

The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny.

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism –-- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

Totalitarianism liquidates its internal enemies or smashes opposition as soon as it arises; it uses methods that are simple and infallible because they are undemocratic. But democracy can defend itself from within only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy.

When an upstart dictator in the United States (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) succeeds in making this a one-party form of government, when the ballot is useless, I shall have the courage to stand up and advocate the use of bullets.

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.

I conceived the most profound admiration for ...[Mussolini, who] ... would not deal with the internal enemies of Italy, but pushed their annihilation in every way and by all means.

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

Every stupid policeman, fanatical judge, or moralist for revenue, can successfully abridge freedom of speech by the lawless use of power, and the hysterical mob of pretending lovers of liberty and democracy will stand by an applaud, --so low have we fallen since our American Constitutions were written. We see how the very essence of tyranny thrives under the forms of democracy

Politics without responsibility IS fascism.

We cannot have a society in which some dictator somewhere can impose censorship here in the United States.

Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.

One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly and wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror - real or fake, provoked or accidental - can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy.

Fascism is a lie told by bullies.

The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.

Reign of blows cascading down upon your shoulders Far too many men dressed up as soldiers The lamb is brought to the ground Under the weight of the Crown A crown of thorns and dark deeds The swastika and the hammer and sickle Are symbols that reap only weeds

Because Fascism is a lie, it is condemned to literary sterility. And when it is past, it will have no history, except the bloody history of murder.

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.

The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.