The first people a dictator puts in jail after a coup are the writers, the teachers, the librarians — because these people are dangerous. They have enough vocabulary to recognize injustice and to speak out loudly about it. Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people.

Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.

... it's not an accident that the creative imagination is the first thing that's punished when tyrannies take over …

There is only one form of government that cannot produce good writers, and that system is Fascism. For Fascism is a lie told by bullies. A writer who will not lie cannot live or work under Fascism.
Because Fascism is a lie, it is condemned to literary sterility. And when it is past, it will have no history, except the bloody history of murder.

I know a fascist when I see one.

I am a fascist and will die a fascist.

For some reason, all the best matadors were Fascists.

It can get pretty fascist in here...

This machine kills fascists.

As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.

[Writers] are feared by every tyrant — who shows his fear by burning the books and destroying the individuals.

Can't trust a fascist--truth is always your first sacrifice to the welfare of the state

—Poets and anarchists are always the first to go. —Where. —To the frontline. Wherever it is.

The collectivism of fascism subordinates the individual to the totalitarian state and subjects him to ruthless dictatorship.