On 18 May 2018, Fry participated in the semi-annual Munk Debates in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he argued against political correctness on the "Con" side of the topic "Be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress..." alongside Jordan Peterson, and in opposition to "Pro" side represented by Michelle Goldberg and Michael Eric Dyson. During the debate, Fry paraphrased a famous sentence from the 1923 essay "I Am Afraid", in which Old Bolshevik-turned-Soviet dissident Yevgeny Zamyatin denounced censorship in the Soviet Union. The original sentence reads, "True literature can exist only when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics." Fry's rendering, however, reads, "Progress is not achieved by preachers and guardians of morality, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and sceptics."