"I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions,..." (Lillian Hellman)

"I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form and if I had ever
seen any I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the
proper authorities. But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years
ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and
dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions,
even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person
and could have no comfortable place in any political group."

SOURCE: From a letter by author and playwright Lillian Hellman to the Committee on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives, May 19, 1952