"It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom"
About this Quote
Freedom, Quentin Crisp suggests, doesn’t arrive on the clean click of a revelation. It arrives the way a scandal becomes background noise: through sheer, grinding familiarity. The line is a sly rebuke to the liberal fantasy that truth automatically emancipates. Facts, in Crisp’s telling, don’t win because they’re dazzling; they win because they’re unavoidable. Repetition turns “unthinkable” into “old news,” and old news is where panic goes to die.
That second sentence is the barb. “Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom” flips the self-congratulatory story societies tell about their progress. We like to imagine tolerance as a moral achievement, the triumphant product of education and empathy. Crisp frames it as something less noble and more reliable: people eventually get tired of being outraged. The subtext is both cynical and oddly optimistic. Cynical, because it demotes tolerance from virtue to fatigue. Optimistic, because fatigue is common; it doesn’t require saints, only time and exposure.
Context matters: Crisp built a public persona out of refusing shame, surviving decades when queer visibility in Britain wasn’t celebrated but criminalized, pathologized, or treated as a parlor joke. For someone like Crisp, “facts” weren’t trivia; they were identity spoken aloud, again and again, until the culture’s appetite for persecution dulled. His wit isn’t decorative - it’s strategy. By making progress sound unheroic, he makes it sound achievable.
That second sentence is the barb. “Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom” flips the self-congratulatory story societies tell about their progress. We like to imagine tolerance as a moral achievement, the triumphant product of education and empathy. Crisp frames it as something less noble and more reliable: people eventually get tired of being outraged. The subtext is both cynical and oddly optimistic. Cynical, because it demotes tolerance from virtue to fatigue. Optimistic, because fatigue is common; it doesn’t require saints, only time and exposure.
Context matters: Crisp built a public persona out of refusing shame, surviving decades when queer visibility in Britain wasn’t celebrated but criminalized, pathologized, or treated as a parlor joke. For someone like Crisp, “facts” weren’t trivia; they were identity spoken aloud, again and again, until the culture’s appetite for persecution dulled. His wit isn’t decorative - it’s strategy. By making progress sound unheroic, he makes it sound achievable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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