“Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers.”

— Andrei Sakharov

This is a threat to the independence and worth of the human personality, a threat to the meaning of human life.
Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, The Threat to Intellectual Freedom
Context: Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers.
One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.

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Andrei Sakharov 57

Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist 1921–1989

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