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The most effective censorship is not, in fact, legal; in a democracy—as Tocqueville pointed out in Democracy in America—it is public opinion.

— Henry Steele Commager Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

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Democracy

More quotes by Henry Steele Commager

We do not protect freedom in order to indulge error. We protect freedom in order to discover truth.

Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.

Two centuries ago our forefathers brought forth a new nation; now we must join with others to bring forth a new world order.

writing for the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia in A Declaration of INTERdependence (1976)

A nation that silences or intimidates original minds is left only with unoriginal minds and cannot hope to hold its own in the competition of peace or of war.

Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

If you are going to penalize disloyalty, you must first determine what loyalty is; if you are going to silence nonconformity, you must determine what conformity is—and to what it conforms.

Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

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Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution (1917)

The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

Gustave Flaubert

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Henry Steele Commager (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.