The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

Thurber’s sentence warns that a healthy public culture depends on granting artists and writers a presumption of good faith. When a society grows “complacent and fearful,” it begins to treat imaginative work as a threat—something to be monitored, policed, or read for hidden disloyalty—rather than as a civic asset. The result is not merely censorship but a flattening of national character: humor (the ability to tolerate ambiguity, satire, and self-critique) and depth (the capacity for complex feeling and thought) wither when creative people must defend their legitimacy. The quote frames respect for artists as a barometer of democratic confidence and cultural maturity.