Quotables
“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
-Lao Tzu
“It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open ones mouth and remove all doubt”
Mark Twain (attributed)
The Soviet composer who was forced to alter his composing style because of charges of "formalism."
Shostakovich
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Wittgenstein
This director named names to the House Un-American Activities Committee to protect his career during the Hollywood Blacklist.
Elia Kazan
"And so tonight-to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans-I ask for your support."
Richard Nixon
“The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room.”
Frank Lucas, American Gangster
This playwright toned down his political critiques in later works to avoid being blacklisted during the Red Scare.
Arthur Miller
Speech is silver, but silence is golden.
Thomas Carlyle
You never open your mouth until you know what the shot is.
Al Pacino, as Ricky Roma, Glengarry Glen Ross
Many Western journalists self-censored critical coverage of this 2003 conflict to maintain access to official sources and avoid backlash.
The Iraq War
"Silence is violence"
Martin Luther King Jr.: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Elie Wiesel: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
“Even a fool, when he holds his peace, is counted wise: and he that shuts his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”
Proverbs 17:28
This Founding Father refrained from pushing for the abolition of slavery in public forums, despite personal opposition to the institution.
Thomas Jefferson?
E pur si muove
Galileo