Theodor Haecker on tyranny and difficulty

Writing in Germany, 1940:

Tyrants always want a language and literature that is easily understood, for nothing so weakens thought; and what they need is an enfeebled thought, for nothing keeps them so firmly in power. When the ideal and the order is to write an easily understood style, anyone who is difficult to understand is eo ipso suspect.

Journal in the Night , trans. Alexander Dru (New York: Pantheon Books, 1950).

A related post
Geoffrey Hill on difficulty and simplification

[Journal in the Night is available at archive.org.]