"...whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."
— The Bible (King James Version), Matthew 5:28
"All evil, even potential evil, must be eradicated."
— Kore, Goblins
Ahmad: Why has he to die?
Jaffar: He had been thinking, sire.
Ahmad: Is it a crime to think?
Jaffar: In a subject it is quite unpardonable.
Jaffar: He had been thinking, sire.
Ahmad: Is it a crime to think?
Jaffar: In a subject it is quite unpardonable.
"Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself."
— Winston Smith, Nineteen Eighty-Four
"There is no war in Ba Sing Se."
Real Life
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid."
— Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight
"The most dangerous man, to any government, is a man who's able to think things through for himself, without regard for prevailing superstitions and taboos. Without exception, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is immoral, incompetent and corrupt, and if he's a romantic personally he will try to change it. And even if he's not he is quick to spread discontent among those who are."
"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?"
We will mercilessly destroy anyone who, by his deeds or his thoughts — yes, his thoughts! — threatens the unity of the socialist state. To the complete destruction of all enemies, themselves and their kin!
— Josef Stalin
"Now and then it seems that banning is all they can do. It's all they seem to want to do. That's the problem with a free nation: you can't make yourself significant by granting freedoms, so you spend your time looking for freedoms to restrict in the name of a greater good, and there's always a greater good... As long as we're worried about sending messages: it sends an excellent message to let kids know that something that might encourage doubleplus Ungoodthink can be taken away by the state because you might draw the wrong conclusions."
— James Lileks, The Bleat, "Thursday, March 05"
