Rose Martin

“Speak softly, sir. The regime has ears on all sides.’ ‘There’s an old saying that the regime is deaf.’ ‘It’s deaf only when we speak about our problems. When we talk about the regime, its ears are quite sharp.”
― Perumal Murugan, Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat

“He spoke the truth. Rusty always spoke the truth. He defined truth as feeling, and when he said what he felt, he said truth. (Only he didn’t always speak his feelings.) He never lied. You don’t have to lie if you know how to withhold the truth.”
― Ruskin Bond, The Room on the Roof

“Joar was good at mending engines, because in them he could always see what was broken, but humans are full of crap you can’t see. We break in the invisible parts.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends on public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper of the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”
― George Orwell, Fascism and Democracy