Quotessence
Home / Topics / Intellectual Freedom Quotes

Intellectual Freedom Quotes

Browse 49 quotes about Intellectual Freedom.

Intellectual Freedom Quotes

“Literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes. Not only is it doomed in any country which retains a totalitarian structure; but any writer who adopts the totalitarian outlook, who finds excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality, thereby destroys himself as a writer. There is no way out of this... At some time in the future, if the human mind becomes something totally different from what it is now, we may learn to separate literary creation from intellectual honesty. At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity. Any writer or journalist who denies that fact — and nearly all the current praise of the Soviet Union contains or implies such a denial — is, in effect, demanding his own destruction.”

WritingLiteratureImaginationLibertySoviet UnionTotalitarianismIntellectual FreedomCommunsim
Book:The Prevention of Literature
Create image

“يبدو أننا قد اعتدنا أسلوب الوصاية في كل شيء، حتى الأمور الفكرية الخاصة، بل إن وصايتهم الفكرية علينا كشعوب هي ما مكنهم من استعبادنا طوال هذه المدة. إنها الحلقة الأولى والأقوى التي مكنتهم من التحكم في مصيرنا، ولن نتحرر إلا إذا ما تحررنا فكرياً.”

PeopleFateIntellectualCensorshipIntellectual Freedom
Book:صراع الأقنعة
Create image

“Idolatry is inherently paradoxical. Were we an ideally-flawed replication of the divine, free-thinking, history-repeating links in an outcast chain on a smaller, mortal scale, or is our imperfection a special dispensation? Are we a sly thought experiment? Shouldn't those we admire reflect this duality and our shared humanity — not a perfection that never was and never will be?”

PhilosophyHuman NatureExistentialismRebellionImperfectionLearning From MistakesIdolatryIntellectual FreedomShared HumanityHistory Repeats
Author:Stewart Stafford
Create image

“And no matter how much the gray people in power despise knowledge, they can’t do anything about historical objectivity; they can slow it down, but they can’t stop it. Despising and fearing knowledge, they will nonetheless inevitably decide to promote it in order to survive. Sooner or later they will be forced to allow universities and scientific societies, to create research centers, observatories, and laboratories, and thus to create a cadre of people of thought and knowledge: people who are completely beyond their control, people with a completely different psychology and with completely different needs. And these people cannot exist and certainly cannot function in the former atmosphere of low self-interest, banal preoccupations, dull self-satisfaction, and purely carnal needs. They need a new atmosphere— an atmosphere of comprehensive and inclusive learning, permeated with creative tension; they need writers, artists, composers— and the gray people in power are forced to make this concession too. The obstinate ones will be swept aside by their more cunning opponents in the struggle for power, but those who make this concession are, inevitably and paradoxically, digging their own graves against their will. For fatal to the ignorant egoists and fanatics is the growth of a full range of culture in the people— from research in the natural sciences to the ability to marvel at great music. And then comes the associated process of the broad intellectualization of society: an era in which grayness fights its last battles with a brutality that takes humanity back to the middle ages, loses these battles, and forever disappears as an actual force.”

KnowledgeSocietyCensorshipDeterminismIntellectual FreedomHistorical Determinism
Book:Hard to Be a God
Create image

“Given the current pace of its corporatization, academia may well become the worst institution for indoctrinating and subjugating many brilliant minds that may otherwise have great potential for dissidence and creating a new worldview, which is much needed amid the global turmoil we are experiencing internationally.”

AcademiaCorporate CultureIntellectual LifeCorporate GreedAcademicsIntellectual FreedomIntellectual HonestyAcademic FreedomAcademic Industrial ComplexAcademic Politics
Author:Louis Yako
Create image

“Spring of 1955 found Johnny and Klári settled into a small but comfortable house in Georgetown in Washington, D.C., Johnny having made the journey from postdoctoral immigrant to a presidential appointment in just twenty-five years. The interlude in Washington promised to lead to even more productive years ahead. “I want to become independent of the regulated academic life,” von Neumann had written to Klári from Los Alamos in 1943—a goal that was finally within reach. It was not to be.”

AcademiaIntellectual FreedomJohn Von Neumann
Book:Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
Create image

“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.”

WisdomPoliticsEducationSocietyFree SpeechSad But TrueIntellectual FreedomFourth EstateOld Is New
Author:Oscar Wilde
Create image

“Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.”

InspirationalWritingWomenIntellectual Freedom
Book:A Room of One’s Own
Create image

“If you do not want to stop the wheels of progress; if you do not want to go back to the Dark Ages; if you do not want to live again under tyranny, then you must guard your liberty, and you must not let the church get control of your government. If you do, you will lose the greatest legacy ever bequeathed to the human race—intellectual freedom. Now let me tell you another thing. If all the energy and wealth wasted upon religion—in all of its varied forms—had been spent to understand life and its problems, we would today be living under conditions that would seem almost like Utopia. Most of our social and domestic problems would have been solved, and equally as important, our understanding and relations with the other peoples of the world would have, by now, brought about universal peace. Man would have a better understanding of his motives and actions, and would have learned to curb his primitive instincts for revenge and retaliation. He would, by now, know that wars of hate, aggression, and aggrandizement are only productive of more hate and more human suffering. The enlightened and completely emancipated man from the fears of a God and the dogma of hate and revenge would make him a brother to his fellow man. He would devote his energies to discoveries and inventions, which theology previously condemned as a defiance of God, but which have proved so beneficial to him. He would no longer be a slave to a God and live in cringing fear!”

WarSufferingHateEnergyFearPeaceLibertyProgressWasteRevengeTyrannyBrotherhoodDogmaAggressionBeneficialUtopiaDark AgesSeparation Of Church And StateIntellectual FreedomWastedWasteful
Book:An Atheist Manifesto
Create image

“In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.”

DoePhilosophyDisciplineIntellectualConceptsTendenciesDeniedSpecializationIntellectual Freedom
Book:Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords
Create image

“The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily also deprives others of the right to listen to those views.”

ThinkingNeedsStatesGrowthChallengesViewsExpressionIntellectualDiscoveryStrikesUnthinkableFree ExpressionIntellectual FreedomIntellectual Growth
Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Create image

“The shimmering, lucid tones and silver melancholy of I'll Be Right There give readers a South Korea peopled with citizens fighting for honor and intellectual freedom, and longing for love and solace. Kyung-Sook Shin's characters have unforgettable voices-it's no wonder she has so many fans.”

GivingCharacterFightingVoiceWonderFansReaderCitizensHonorIntellectualLongingSouthToneSilverMelancholyKoreaSolaceUnforgettableSouth KoreaIntellectual Freedom
Author:Susan Straight
Create image

“We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.”

ThinkingShouldIdeasDifferentProcessEducationOpinionRolesTeachExampleStudentsExpressionIntellectualImportanceRangeThoughtfulEngagementClassroomRootedTopicsStanceDifferent OpinionsIntellectual Freedom
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image

“While we honour religion and believe it to be a powerful factor in elevating our race, we discriminate, as we hope our readers will also do, between it and dogmatism. Dogmatism has been the bane of civilization and a curse to mankind. It has degraded our sex, stifled intelligent inquiry, and persecuted every independent reformer and every noble cause.”

BelieveHas BeensReligionSexCausesPowerfulRaceMankindReaderCivilizationIntellectualIntelligentIndependentNobleFactorsCurseHonourInquiryPersecutedReformersBaneDogmatismElevatingIntellectual FreedomNoble Causes
Author:Tennessee Celeste Claflin
Create image

“A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms. But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.”

IfsEvilNamesIndividualReligiousViolenceEconomicBalanceIntellectualTemptationIdeologySinnerCombatDelicateRighteousReligious FreedomEconomic SystemsIndividual FreedomReductionismIntellectual FreedomSafeguarding
Author:Pope Francis
Create image

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

InspirationalNationsGrowthPresidentFreedomLibertyEnemyGrowingPoliticianIndependenceIndividualityObediencePresidentialBeing YourselfConformityConventionsConform4th Of JulyFreedom Of ChoiceNonconformityComplianceBusiness GrowthPresidents DayGreat PresidentsPrice Of FreedomChange And GrowthJailerIntellectual FreedomNigeria IndependenceThinking Of YourselfConformity And IndividualityInspirational PresidentialProfiles In CourageChange GrowthInspiring PresidentialThinking About YourselfGrowing Business
Author:John F. Kennedy
Create image

“It is this capacity for relentless self-criticism that should be - everywhere - the true measure of intellectual freedom and cosmopolitanism, not the entrenched cultural power and self-congratulatory moral rhetoric of some people in countries long accustomed to telling other societies what to do and how to behave.”

PeopleShouldLongSelfCountryMoralIntellectualCapacityCriticismBehaveRhetoricAccustomedRelentlessSelf CriticismIntellectual FreedomCosmopolitanism
Author:Pankaj Mishra
Create image

“there are lots of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see...or to at least shut up about what you do see that's different. they are agents of the status quo. not necessarily bad guys, but dangerous guys if you happen to believe in intellectual freedom.”

IfsWorldWantBelieveMayDifferentHappensWould BeGuyDangerousIntellectualAgentsAgendasShut UpStatus QuoBad GuysIntellectual Freedom
Author:Stephen King
Create image

“In Europe, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was seen as a battle against the desire of the Church to limit intellectual freedom, a battle against the Inquisition, a battle against religious censorship. And the victory of the Enlightenment in Europe was seen as pushing religion away from the center of power. In America, at the same time, the Enlightenment meant coming to a country where people were not going to persecute you by reason of your religion. So it meant a liberation into religion. In Europe, it was liberation out of religion.”

PeopleCountryReasonAmericaDesireChurchReligiousHistoryCenturyVictoryBattleLimitsIntellectualEnlightenmentEuropeLiberationPushingCensorshipInquisition18th CenturyIntellectual Freedom
Author:Salman Rushdie
Create image

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”

PoliticsTeachingDangerousRevolutionSpeechDefeatLibertarianCivil RightsCensorshipFree SpeechFreedom Of SpeechRestrictionFirst AmendmentFreedom And LibertyFreedom Of ThoughtFreedom LibertyCivil LibertiesAmerican RevolutionBannedLimiting GovernmentRights And FreedomsLimited FreedomCensoredSubversionCensoringAmerican LibertyFree ThoughtBanned BooksLimiting FreedomCensorship In BooksAmerican FreedomBook BanningIntellectual FreedomPolitical RevolutionCensoring BooksFreedom To ReadFirst Amendment RightsRights In America
Author:William O. Douglas
Create image

“When the nazis came to power, I looked to the universities that prided themselves upon their intellectual freedom, and they failed me. I looked to the German press, which prided itself on the freedom of the press, and it failed me. Until at last the churches stood alone, and that for which I once had little regard earned my respect.”

LittlesLastsChurchBusinessSocietyIntellectualEthicsRegardPressesUniversityNaziFreedom Of The PressIntellectual Freedom
Author:Albert Einstein
Create image

“Intellectual freedom is essential -- freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship.”

PeopleHandsPoliticalFreedomInformationEssentialsMassIntellectualPrejudicePressureMythDebatePropagandaGuaranteesTransformedDictatorshipBloodyPhysicistHypocriteOpen MindedFreedom Of ThoughtInfectionTreacherousDissidentsDemagogueryIntellectual FreedomAccess To InformationDemagogy
Book:Progress, coexistence, and intellectual freedom
Create image

“The social model of the Bolsheviks failed, as will any model that denies individual rights, intellectual freedom, and freedom of competing political parties. Without these freedoms and rights, there is no motivation for people to work. Such a system cannot be sustained, especially in light of the technological revolution of the information era.”

PeopleWarLightPoliticalMotivationIndividualSocialPartyRightsInformationRevolutionColdIntellectualModelsDenyErasCold WarTechnologicalCompetingPolitical PartiesIndividual RightsBolsheviksIntellectual Freedom
Author:Mikhail Gorbachev
Create image