Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
Alan Barth (1906-1979) American journalist
The Loyalty of Free Men (1951)
Quotations by:
Barth, Alan
The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should serve the state is essentially a Communist notion. In a free society these institutions must be wholly free –- which is to say that their function is to serve as checks upon the state.
Alan Barth (1906-1979) American journalist
The Rights of Free Men: An Essential Guide to Civil Liberties (1984)
Those who so glibly dismiss as “mere legal technicalities” the procedural guarantees of the Constitution limiting law-enforcement activities forget that nothing is more basic to civil liberty than freedom from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment by policemen who are masters, not servants, of the law. The most characteristic symbol of the police state is the ominous rap on the door at night. Freedom from the fear of that rap is the basic condition for the exercise of every other form of freedom.
Alan Barth (1906-1979) American journalist
The Rights of Free Men (1984)
Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.
Alan Barth (1906-1979) American journalist
The Rights of Free Men (1984)