"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
— George Orwell
If Liberty Means Anything At All
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
About this quote
Orwell wrote this line in the preface he drafted for Animal Farm (1945), titled "The Freedom of the Press," which was not published with the book during his lifetime — British publishers at the time were reluctant to offend the Soviet Union, a wartime ally. Orwell was arguing that self-censorship among the British literary class was as dangerous as state censorship, stifling the uncomfortable truths that a free press exists to tell. The preface was finally published posthumously in 1972.
Source
Proposed preface to Animal Farm, written 1945 (published posthumously)
