freedom of speech quotes

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.

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.

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.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

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

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

I consider myself as a free spokesman for the people.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

There are really two core principles at play here. There’s giving people a voice so that people can express their opinions. Then, there’s keeping the community safe, which I think is really important. We’re not gonna let people plan violence or attack each other or do bad things.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.