Richard Pryor Quotes

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

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

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

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

Many who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lamppost.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

I've always hated oppression.

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

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

My books were attacked constantly by the Communist Party for not hewing to the Party line. I have never hewed to a Party line of any kind.

Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail.

I keep attacking the villains, the know-nothings, the people who want to take our freedoms away.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.

The aftermath of the war is what inspired us to write many of our plays. The whole reason for our writing Inherit the Wind was that we were appalled at the blacklisting. We were appalled at thought control.

When you have a person in power who punishes people for speaking their mind, it's truly dangerous.

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

History’s most important lesson is that it has not been possible to make coercion compatible with the truth.