Jeff Scott’s Reviews > Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times > Status Update
Jeff Scott
is on page 82 of 240
“I did not like the possibility of being arrested, humiliated, and flogged. I did not like the prospect of being expelled from my job or having my books censored and banned. But there was something greater than fear—or more magnetic than fear—that was driving me: an instinct for self-preservation. I knew that giving in to them meant self-negation. It meant a public abdication of who I was.”
— Apr 02, 2022 08:32PM
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Jeff’s Previous Updates
Jeff Scott
is on page 199 of 240
“Every bookstore, library, museum, or theater that closes; every book that is censored or removed from schools and libraries; every art, music, or literature program canceled in our schools and other institutions—these should all remind us of our responsibility.”
— Apr 04, 2022 03:45PM
Jeff Scott
is on page 92 of 240
“Living in a totalitarian society is similar to living in a disaster zone. Individuals experience a different kind of fear: the constant anxiety that the way you look, the way you act, the way you think or feel is illegal and punishable. At any moment, you could be reprimanded, arrested, or jailed simply because of who you are. ”
— Apr 03, 2022 06:17PM
Jeff Scott
is on page 80 of 240
“We don’t need a supreme leader to deprive us of our hard-earned freedoms. When we stop reading, we pave the way toward book burning; when we stop caring, we make way for someone else to take over control; when we prefer personality to character, and reality show or virtual reality to reality itself, then we get the kind of politicians that we deserve.”
— Apr 02, 2022 01:41PM
Jeff Scott
is on page 72 of 240
“The most seductive aspect of a totalitarian society is the security it offers. The truth is uncomfortable, and a dictator promises an abdication of responsibility from it.”
— Apr 02, 2022 01:28PM
Jeff Scott
is on page 70 of 240
“We need the poet to constantly question things as they are, to jolt us out of our comfort zones, to make us to look at the world through the eyes of others and seek to understand experiences that are not our own. ”
— Apr 02, 2022 01:23PM
Jeff Scott
is on page 22 of 240
“We enter dangerous territory when we blur the lines between fiction and reality, or weaponize fiction to further an agenda—be it political, religious, or personal. The totalitarian mindset breaks the borders between fiction and reality, and, in the same manner, it imposes its own fictions and mythologies on the realities of its people, speaking and acting on their behalf. ”
— Apr 02, 2022 10:02AM
Jeff Scott
is on page 9 of 240
“Reading does not necessarily lead to direct political action, but it fosters a mindset that questions and doubts; that is not content with the establishment or the established. Fiction arouses our curiosity, and it is this curiosity, this restlessness, this desire to know that makes both writing and reading so dangerous.”
— Apr 02, 2022 09:34AM
