Politics & Power Quote by Hal Holbrook

Holbrook’s line doesn’t read like a policy argument; it lands like a rehearsal-room confession. “I got a feeling” is doing quiet work here: it’s not a manifesto, it’s an actor’s gut-check, the kind of instinctive read you trust when a scene starts to go false. Then comes the blunt pivot: “I hate it.” That’s less nuanced than persuasive, but it’s rhetorically effective because it frames political correctness as an atmosphere, not an idea - something you breathe in and it changes how you speak.

The sharpest move is the causal claim: political correctness “causes us to lie silently.” Holbrook isn’t primarily defending offensive speech; he’s indicting social pressure for producing bad performances. The subtext is that public life has become a stage where everyone is improvising self-censorship, choosing safety over sincerity, and calling that virtue. “Lie silently” is almost paradoxical - lies are usually loud - which captures the specific modern phenomenon of omission: you don’t say the thing, you signal the right thing, and you let the gap stand in for honesty.

Context matters: Holbrook made a career inhabiting Mark Twain, a patron saint of American plain-speaking and anti-pious satire. Coming from an actor associated with Twain’s skepticism toward moral fashion, the quote reads as a warning about etiquette hardening into ideology. Still, it smuggles in a romantic faith that “what we think” is inherently worth airing. The tension is the point: he’s mourning candor, but also nostalgic for a world where candor didn’t come with collateral damage.