“If I speak, I am condemned.
If I stay silent, I am damned!”

— Victor Hugo , book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!" by Victor Hugo?

Victor Hugo 308

French poet, novelist, and dramatist 1802–1885

Related quotes

“I am never silent. I speak eternally.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

"I Speak Eternally" http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/ispeak.html in Love Alone Prevails (1981) by Kitty Davy, p. 166, 179.
General sources
Context: External silence helps to achieve inner Silence, and only in internal Silence is Baba found — in profound inner Silence. I am never silent. I speak eternally. The voice that is heard deep within the soul is My voice — the voice of inspiration, of intuition, of guidance. Through those who are receptive to this voice, I speak.

“Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

“If I didn't care for fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

16 August 1925
Source: Enough Rope (1926)

“I will not be ignored. I am here to stay.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted in Queer Quotes: On Coming Out and Culture, Love and Lust, Politics and Pride, and Much More, Teresa Theophano, ed. (2004)

“I stayed alive therefore I am.”

Imre Kertész book Kaddish for an Unborn Child

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

“I am expecting to come second, at least…I am not putting in all these hours and putting up with media trying to come second, I am not…I am trying to win this damn thing.”

Melissa Lee (1966) New Zealand politician

Nats ask Act MP to lay off Melissa Lee, Patrick, Gower, The New Zealand Herald, 23 May 2009, 2010-07-13 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10574128,
After the radio interview
Mount Albert by-election campaign, 2009

“I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (20 November 1872)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.