If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

I had three points I wanted to make: That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

I think the running game is very important to every offense. Being balanced is extremely important. There’s times where you have to throw the ball. You could be down late in the game, you need to come back; you have to be able to pass it when they know you’re passing it.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.

‚Fahrenheit 451‘ postulates a lot of things I didn’t want to have happen.

I’ve analyzed the best I can… and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them; I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence.

There’s no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, ‚The government’s corrupt,‘ and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

Most of us have hoped and prayed for something to happen a certain way, but it didn’t. And when this happened, we had a choice to make: to react with offense toward God or to trust Him anyway.

Don’t join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

I consider myself as a free spokesman for the people.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

When you are spiritually connected, you are not looking for occasions to be offended, and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

Bobby Knight told me this: ‚There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.‘ In other words a good offense wins.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.

There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.

If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

What we will do is we’ll say, ‚Okay, you have your page, and if you’re not trying to organize harm against someone, or attacking someone, then you can put up that content on your page, even if people might disagree with it or find it offensive.‘ But that doesn’t mean that we have a responsibility to make it widely distributed in News Feed.

The government of Israel doesn’t like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

Beautiful speech doesn’t need protection, it’s ugly speech that needs protection. We have these cultural norms that allow people to say really ugly things. You don’t have to invite them to your dinner party, but you should let them say it.

Sometimes a nickname is used instead of the real name. But a nickname may offend either the one named or the parents who gave the name.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

God’s first line of defense – and offense – for every situation is prayer.

Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.

The press is the enemy.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

Everyone does things differently on offense. Everyone’s goal is to score points.

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

You can’t score if you’re turning it over. It’s like a punt. If you go out and you punt 12 times, you’re not scoring points. That’s not good. So, when you turn the ball over and throw interceptions, you’re giving the other team more opportunities and your team less opportunities.

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

Obscenity comes from grime.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

There is never a shortage anywhere of lawyers eager to attack the First Amendment, as though it were nothing more than a clause in a lease from a crooked slumlord.

They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus, that means guns, sex, lies, video tapes, but if I talk about God my record won’t get played Huh?

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone – except God.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.