“We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public.”
Burn This Book, p. 2 (2009)
Context: We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public. Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world’s resources. The alarm, the disquiet, writers raise is instructive because it is open and vulnerable, because if unpoliced it is threatening. Therefore the historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow.
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Toni Morrison 184
American writer 1931–2019Related quotes
“Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation: not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive from what ills you are free yourself is pleasant.”
Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis
e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;
non quia vexari quemquamst jucunda voluptas,
sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.
Book II, lines 1–4 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done. We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.
Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 6, Reckoning, p. 153
Source: Anarchy and Christianity (1988), p. 61
“The trouble with unknown enemies is that they are so difficult to identify.”
Source: The Hippopotamus Pool
Source: "Prayut vows not to resign" in Bangkok Post https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/politics/2157447/prayut-vows-not-to-resign (31 July 2021)
Free Culture (2004)
Appendix: "On Intellectual Craftsmanship"
The Sociological Imagination (1959)
As quoted in CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-henry-paulson-op-ed-hillary-clinton-election-2016/ (June 2016)
Choose country over party (2016)