“Lives were being ruined and few hands were raised in help. Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?”

— Lillian Hellman

Source: Scoundrel Time (1976), p. 82
Context: To many intellectuals the radicals had become the chief, perhaps the only, enemy. … Not alone because the radical's reasons were suspect but because his convictions would lead to a world that deprived the rest of us of what we had. Very few people were capable of admitting anything so simple. But the antiradical camp contained the same divisions: often they were honest and thoughtful men, often they were men who turned down a dark road for dark reasons.
But radicalism or anti-radicalism should have had nothing to do with the sly, miserable methods of McCarthy, Nixon and colleagues, as they flailed at Communists, near-Communists, and nowhere-near Communists. Lives were being ruined and few hands were raised in help. Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?

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Lillian Hellman 20

American dramatist and screenwriter 1905–1984

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“Lives were being ruined and few hands were raised in help. Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?”

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