Quotes about free-speech

The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose lib

It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking

The real Machiavellian genius of the First Amendment is that free speech turns out to be mostly harmless — a lot of P.C. nit-picking, dingbat conspiracy theories, tedious libertarian screeds and name calling. The only “free speech” that has any effect in a stable, well-run plutocracy is the kind protected by Buckley vs. Valeo in the form of campaign contributions.

In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young peopl

[I]n my own case at least I feel my professional need for freedom of speech and expression prejudices me toward a government whose constitution guarantees it.

Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read. If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it. To r

We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our p

Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that you have to agree with people and their beliefs to defend them from injustice.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.

The United States, almost alone today, offers the liberties and the privileges and the tools of freedom. In this land the citizens are still invited to write their plays and books, to paint their pictures, to meet for discussion, to dissent as well as to agree, to mount soapboxes in the public square, to enjoy education in all subjects without censorship, to hold court and judge one another, to compose music, to talk politics with their neighbors without wondering whether the secret police are l

Women that speak against Islam are being labelled as islamophobic, as though our right to free speech is disregarded, when it comes down to an oppressive regime, which does not even recognise women as human...

The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.

I once had a mind of quicksand,That dragged ideas into its depths,Inhaling specks of sunlight,Every time I drew a breath,But the world thought me a hazard,When every word I spoke, I meant,So around me they put caution tape,And filled me with cement.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like

All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!

On peut rire de tout mais pas avec n'importe qui.

No idea is above scrutiny and no people are beneath dignity.

Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, about the most important things in the world, and you might as well, if you were going to fight it, be called "Rushdie," and stand where your father had placed you, in the tradition of the grand Aristotelian, Averroës, Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd.

[T]he imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.

I've never subscribed to the "words can never hurt me" point of view. Because if words can't hurt, then neither can they help or heal or inspire. Yes, words can brutalize. They can shame and scar. But people must be free to say them anyway. We protect free speech not because words are harmless, but because they are powerful.

Oil may run out, liquidity may dry up, but as long as ink flows freely, the next chapter of Life will continue to be written.

A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists.Don’t let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.

Now she understood a few things: that the American academy, which one might have thought the place to defend freedom of speech, had been the seat and soul of abrogating freedom of speech, if the first assault on its freedom can be said to be restricting, or handcuffing speech. The day she heard “redneck” on NPR, she turned NPR off, not because broadcasters were still using the term, but because she knew one day they would not be. In fact, she had a vision of the quiet moment backstage at a Bosto

Truthfully, wicked people reveal themselves in words first, to inhibit speech would inhibit us seeing the wicked before they act.

Yawns are not the only infectious things out there besides germs.Giggles can spread from person to person.So can blushing.But maybe the most powerful infectious thing is the act of speaking the truth.

It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what.", The Guardian, 5 June 2005]

The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.

Feminists often pretend to be angry and offended in order to win debates or, I should say, prevent debates from ever happening. If you can act angry and offended, especially on a college campus, you can shut down the other side using a speech code.

Feminism, which is supposedly for everybody, apparently has no place for conservative women. Why would feminists need to exclude entire swaths of the population? Because they know their ideology cannot stand up to challenges, they know they themselves do not understand it, and they know that to accomplish their goals they cannot allow discussion to occur....To pretend that your ideology is impenetrable and the obvious answer to modern social problems and then to turn around and exclude people fr

Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges—have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt—laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love.All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all

Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.

You can't talk about fucking in America, people say you're dirty. But if you talk about killing somebody, that's cool.

I am halfway through Hillary Clinton's latest called "Living History"...pretty lighthearted on the scale...unlike David Hick's autobiography...I had to skip a couple of hundred pages in the middle of that one because it was too distressing for me to read. Undoubtedly yours will be the same...I will read the beginning, skip all the awful bit in the middle and read your happy ever after bit at the end.

The mere fact that I exist, means that I deserve to be here and to express myself any damn way I please.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversity of opinion, the values of a given society will uncannily match those of whichever organizations have the scale to pay for runs of thirty-second slots around the nightly news bulletin.

Worst of all, with every victim, who is deliberately silenced to preserve the peace, we are creating a new minority. Through deliberate neglect, the left creates what they fear the most: a non-ethnic group of people that will not blink an eye, when violent crimes are committed. No one cared when it happened to them, so why should they? An eye for an eye...as they don't use them anyway.

The hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners.

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues.

The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of the truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

If you defend free speech for bigots but not to combat bigotry, then you believe in bigotry, not free speech.

Article 191. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may ther

A study of the San Francisco Beat enclave by psychiatrist Dr. Francis Rigney in the late 1950's showed 60 percent "were so psychotic or crippled by tensions, anxiety and neurosis as to be nonfunctional in the competitive world." In contrast, the several studies released so far made of the student radicals at Berkeley show them to be stable, serious, and of above-average intelligence. The point is that the Beats had to "cop out" of the Rat Race because they couldn't perform; the New Left chooses

I detect the activist returning with a vengence.

It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation.

That said, the question remains: how to strike the balance between free speech and mutual respect in this mixed-up world, both blessed and cursed with instant communication? We should not fight fire with fire, threats with threats.

If we suggest that it is okay to make fun of everything except certain aspects of Islam because Muslims are much more sensitive than the rest of the population, isn’t that discrimination? Shouldn’t we treat the second-largest religion in France, exactly as we treat the first? It’s time to put an end to the revolting paternalism of the white, middle-class, “leftist” intellectual trying to coexist with these “poor, subliterate wretches.” “'I’m' educated; obviously I get that 'Charlie Hebdo' is a h

To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men.

The propensity to say and do dumb things, and even wicked things, is simply part of human nature. One can blame the Church or Christianity for such things only on the thoroughly unwarranted assumption that Christianity claims to have abolished human nature. The truth is that Christianity, and the Catholic Church in particular, is the mother of Western civilization, with all it strengths and weaknesses, including its frequently exaggerated penchant for self-criticism. Like others who know what it

Those who claim to be hurt by words must be led to expect nothing as compensation. Otherwise, once they learn they can get something by claiming to be hurt, they will go into the business of being offended.

The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, “Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced sil

It's a great country: you can say whatever you like so long as it is strictly true--nobody will ever take you seriously.

Every man — in the development of his own personality — has the right to form his own beliefs and opinions. Hence, suppression of belief, opinion and expression is an affront to the dignity of man, a negation of man’s essential na

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of tho

[T]here is both an intrinsic and instrumental value to privacy. Intrinsically, privacy is precious to the extent that it is a component of a liberty. Part of citizenship in a free society is the expectation that one's personal affairs and physical person are inviolable so long as one remains within the law. A robust concept of freedom includes the freedom from constant and intrusive government surveillance of one's life. From this perspective, Fourth Amendment violations are objectionable for th

From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel. In 1865 the Radical Republicans sought to snare private conscience in a web of oaths and affirmations of loyalty. Spokesmen for the South did service for the Nation in resisting

With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.

This is a forum for readers. Authors walk these halls at their own risk. I’ve been to the Coliseum in Rome. GR is just that. Books are gladiators. Readers are ravenous citizens awaiting their next bite of entertainment, all Caesars with thumbs readied for judgement. Even champions fall prey to sword now and then. And you know what they say about the pen and the sword…the analogy is a bit muddled, but it’s in there somewhere.

Twitter, far from fostering debate and broadening minds, has turned us into a hive of scolds. Angry mobs wait on the sidelines to strike and then bask in the glow of their moral superiority.

I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view.

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderat

Our country is the only one that truly permits you to speak bad of your country, so you really shouldn’t say anything bad about it.

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

Potentially, anyone writing on the Web can reach a global audience. In practice, hardly anyone ever does.

If we do not believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we do not believe in it at all.