Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Vonnegut compares censorship to having no voice at all, valuing freedom of expression.
- In plain terms
- It is better to be free but silent than forced to speak by police.
- What can you take from it?
- Protect freedom of speech even if some choose not to use it.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What is the point of free speech without readers?
- Is silence safer than speech?
Another view
Freedom without responsibility or voice can still lead to harm.
More from Kurt Vonnegut
Belief is nearly the whole of the Universe, whether based on truth or not.
Permalink to quote #136 What is literature but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the Universe but a few molecules who have t…
Permalink to quote #138 I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.
Permalink to quote #135
Related quotes
I am of course confident that I will fulfil my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my li…
Alexander SolzhenitsynAlexander Solzhenitsyn quote #2 When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech write…
Philip RothPhilip Roth quote #22 I think the most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that.'
Garrison KeillorGarrison Keillor quote #22