Silencing Quotes:

To me, meditation is simply silencing or focusing the mind.

- Brendon Burchard

source: "My Relaxation and Meditation Routine" by Brendon Burchard, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 16, 2012.

topic: Meditation, Mind, Silencing

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

- Harry S. Truman

source: United States. President (1945-1953 : Truman), Harry S. Truman (1961). “Harry S. Truman: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, 1945-53”

topic: Country, Government, Voice, Police State, Freedom To Read

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

- John Stuart Mill

source: John Stuart Mill (2012). “On Liberty”, p.15, Courier Corporation

topic: Hearing, Opinion, Assuming, Infallibility, Absolute Certainty

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring, Love And Hate, Darfur

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

- Barack Obama

topic: Hands, Deceit, Fists, Inaugural, Inauguration

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

- John Stuart Mill

topic: Opportunity, Expression, Errors, Freedom Of Expression, Collision

If this is how science operates, by silencing those who express opposing views rather than by debating with them, then science is dead and we are in a new era of the Inquisition.

- Graham Hancock

topic: Views, Opposing Views, Eras, New Era, Silencing

When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol.

- Joel Salatin

topic: Views, Giving, Minorities, Silencing

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

- John Stuart Mill

source: On Liberty ch. 2 (1859)

topic: Freedom, Civil Rights, Would Be, Freedom Of Expression, Liberty Of Speech

You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price, you may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.

- Alexander Litvinenko

topic: Life, Men, Silence, Silencing

You cannot take away freedom to protect it, you cannot destroy the free market to save it, and you cannot uphold freedom of speech by silencing those with whom you disagree. To take rights away to defend them or to spend your way out of debt defies common sense.

- Glenn Beck

source: Glenn Beck (2009). “Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Ouf-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

topic: Rights, Common Sense, Freedom Of Speech, Silencing

The problem of freedom in America is that of maintaining a competition of ideas, and you do not achieve that by silencing one brand of idea.

- Max Lerner

topic: Ideas, America, Competition, Silencing

Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart.

- C. S. Lewis

topic: Hurt, Heart, Silence, Hurt Feelings, Break Your Heart

If you stand still there is only one way to go, and that's backwards.

- Peter Shilton

topic: Soccer, Way, Backwards, Police State, Silencing

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

source: Alan Barth, James David Barber (1965). “Heritage of Liberty”

topic: Criticism, Civil Rights, Majority, Silencing

After a war, the silencing of arms is not enough. Peace means respecting all rights. You can't respect one of them and violate the others. When a society doesn't respect the rights of its citizens, it undermines peace and leads it back to war.

- Maria Julia Hernandez

topic: Respect, War, Mean, Silencing

'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

- Carl Sagan

source: Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.550, Ballantine Books

topic: Deeper Understanding, Stale, Exchanging, Silencing

Menders of all times and places have taught that silencing the thoughts in our heads and opening to the experience of the body and emotions is the basis of all healing. It's the only means by which we can reclaim our true nature or feel the subtle cues telling us how to find our way through life.

- Martha Beck

topic: Mean, Healing, Body, Silencing, True Nature

The silencing of the rainforests is a double deforestation, not only of trees but a deforestation of the mind's music, medicine and knowledge.

- Jay Griffiths

source: "Fifty years on, the silence of Rachel Carson's spring consumes us" by Jay Griffiths, www.theguardian.com. September 25, 2012.

topic: Medicine, Tree, Mind, Rainforest, Deforestation

I loved meditation. I love it because that's where you find what your voice is. You cannot really find it easily in this culture. This culture is the noisiest culture ever, ever. I think the damage that it has done to people is in that realm of silencing them. They are overwhelmed by gadgets. They don't know what to think because they're so heavily programmed about what it is that they should want and should think.

- Alice Walker

source: Source: alicewalkersgarden.com

topic: Thinking, Voice, People, Silencing

GamerGate is about harassing, threatening and silencing women. Started that way, has been that way all along. Dont pretend otherwise.

- John Scalzi

topic: Way, Threatening, Silencing

As for major obstacles keeping young Latinos from becoming filmmakers, I think our communities are still coming into their identities as storytellers. It's such an important identity to reclaim - it's how our ancestors kept our cultures alive. But a long history of silencing, invisibility, and marginalization has kept generations of Latinos from believing in themselves, from seeing themselves as agents of their own lives. I think there needs to be a focus on this aspect to help cultivate young Latinas to see themselves as cultural producers and defenders.

- Aurora Guerrero

source: Source: blogs.indiewire.com

topic: Believe, Thinking, Long, Marginalization, Silencing

By silencing the mind, we can experience real peace. As long as various kinds of thoughts agitate the brain, we don't experience 100 percent peace.

- Henepola Gunaratana

topic: Real, Long, Brain, Agitate, Silencing

Hey, I liked my idea of bringer her along, but you already vetoed that idea, so now I'm resorting to Plan B, which is to interrogate her. And I am really looking forward to it. I used to play a game called interrogation with one of my old girlfriends where we-" "That's enough." Cinder raised her hand, silencing him.

- Marissa Meyer

topic: Girlfriend, Hands, Games, Old Girlfriend, Silencing

If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.

- Neil Gaiman

topic: Past, Voice, Library, Silencing

I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever.

- Sinclair Lewis

source: Sinclair Lewis (2017). “It Can't Happen Here”, p.359, PublishDrive

topic: Men, Forever, Important, Critical Spirit, Silencing

The authentic rebel knows that the silencing of all his adversaries is the last thing on earth he wishes: their extermination would deprive him and whoever else remains alive from the uniqueness, the originality, and the capacity for insight that these enemies being human also have and could share with him. If we wish the death of our enemies, we cannot talk about the community of man. In the losing of the chance for dialogue with our enemies, we are the poorer.

- Rollo May

source: Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.237, W. W. Norton & Company

topic: Men, Community, Enemy, Silencing

The very aim of meditation is firstly subjugation of the mind, so that it can no longer be an obstacle to a clear vision of the Supreme cliché. Secondly, it is the full silencing of that mind, so that consciousness becomes similar to the mirror-like surface of a quiet lake or pool. I can see the real Reflection of Truth in it then, but not otherwise.

- Mouni Sadhu

source: Mouni Sadhu (2005). “Meditation: An Outline for Practical Study”, p.196, Karnac Books

topic: Real, Reflection, Mirrors, Clear Vision, Silencing

Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.

- Jacques Barzun

topic: Cutting, Air, Symphony, Finale, Silencing

Governments, political parties, pressure groups, and the bureaucrats of the educational hierarchy think they can avoid the inevitable consequences of unsuitable measures by boycotting and silencing the independent economists. But truth persists and works, even if nobody is left to utter it.

- Ludwig von Mises

topic: Educational, Party, Independent, Pressure Groups, Silencing

They are all beasts of burden in a sense, ' Thoreau once remarked of animals, 'made to carry some portion of our thoughts.' Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech.

- Rebecca Solnit

source: Rebecca Solnit (2006). “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”, p.97, Penguin

topic: Nature, Animal, Imagination, Beast Of Burden, Silencing

The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

source: Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.127, Simon and Schuster

topic: Mean, Liberty, Superstitions, Silencing

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

- Albert Camus

topic: History, Encounters, Want, Silencing

The ultimate way of Being lies beyond all contradictory pairs of opposites with which our two dimensional thinking mind operates. As soon as we are successful in silencing the restless activity of the thinking mind and give a chance to intuition, the pure all embracing spirit in us will manifest effortlessly.

- Anagarika Govinda

topic: Lying, Successful, Thinking, Thinking Mind, Silencing

The first stage of this tranquility consists in silencing the lips when the heart is excited. The second, in silencing the mind when the soul is still excited. The goal is a perfect peacefulness even in the middle of the raging storm.

- John Climacus

topic: Heart, Perfect, Goal, Peacefulness, Silencing

Sometimes I feel as if four thousand years of silencing women, of the fear of women who were burned in oil or eviscerated in front of their daughters, is imprinted deep within me and has altered my DNA.

- Olympia Dukakis

source: "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Mother, Daughter, Dna, Deep Within, Silencing

Either by silencing the mind or by opening the heart, today's man can become tomorrow's God, tomorrow's Divinity. And embodied Divinity soon becomes revealed Immortality.

- Sri Chinmoy

topic: Heart, Men, Mind, Silencing

Communication starts with the understanding that there is my point of view (my truth) and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak the truth are very silencing of others.

- Sheryl Sandberg

topic: Believe, Communication, Views, Silencing, My Truth

The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.

- Michel-Rolph Trouillot

source: Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2015). “Silencing the Past (20th anniversary edition): Power and the Production of History”, p.73, Beacon Press

topic: Perspective, Long, World, Haitian, Haitian Revolution

Any society that is silencing its women has no future.

- Hafsat Abiola

topic: Silencing

I describe what is happening as 'food fascism' because this system can only survive through totalitarian control. With patents on seed, an illegitimate legal system is manipulated to create seed monopolies. Seed laws that require uniformity - which criminalize diversity and the use of open-pollinated seeds - are fascist in nature. Suing farmers after contaminating their crops is another aspect of this fascism. Pseudo-hygiene laws that criminalize local, artisanal food are food fascism. And attacks on scientists and the silencing of independent research are examples of knowledge fascism.

- Vandana Shiva

topic: Independent, Law, Hygiene, Suing, Silencing

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

- Barack Obama

source: First Presidential Inaugural Address, Delivered 20 January 2009

topic: Mutual Interest, Hands, Way Forward, Inaugural, Inauguration

Religion's voice has been taken away. It was taken away by Lyndon Johnson in the 1970s because of a dispute he had, I think, with the church. And this was his way of silencing the church.

- Donald Trump

source: Source: www.pbs.org

topic: Taken, Thinking, Voice, Silencing

Turns out, this 'whatabboutery' is a classic way of silencing women when you don't like what they're fighting for. Don't panic, feminists are quite capable of fighting multiple battles at once!

- Laura Bates

topic: Fighting, Feminist, Battle, Silencing

Nirvana is the complete silencing of concepts.

- Nhat Hanh

topic: Silencing

Silencing the U.S. State Department, putting a friend of Vladimir Putin`s in charge at the U.S. State Department, who stands by quietly while the State Department gets hollowed out, gets gutted, that`s a dream for the Russian government, right? That`s a dream for Putin.

- Rachel Maddow

source: Source: www.msnbc.com

topic: Dream, Government, Putin, Russian Government, Silencing

Yes some people say ignorant things about autism but silencing them solves nothing. They need to be educated. That's how things change.

- Stuart Duncan

topic: People, Autism, Ignorant, Silencing

I lay down on the bed clasping the pictures and buried my face in the pillow in a vain attempt at silencing my sobs. But it was as if all my life's accumulated grief had finally found an outlet and was allowed to take its course. I screamed, I cried, until the grief became bearable. (174)

- Linda Olsson

source: Linda Olsson (2009). “Sonata for Miriam: A Novel”, p.114, Penguin

topic: Grief, Bed, Faces, Silencing