quotations about freedom of speech
Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense--the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammelled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live you are a subject and not a citizen.
WILLIAM E. BORAH
remarks to the Senate, April 19, 1917
Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Nomad: From Islam to America
Free speech is not speech you agree with, uttered by someone you admire. It's speech that you find stupid, selfish, dangerous, uninformed or threatening, spoken and sponsored by someone you despise, fear or ridicule.
ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
"In politics, money is speech", Washington Post, April 6, 2014
I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy, May 1887
I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.
WOODROW WILSON
address at the Institute of France, "That Quick Comradeship of Letters", May 10, 1919
I am so disgusted with people who think free speech is defined as being able to say what you think without being criticized.
JONAH GOLDBERG
"Dissident Chicks", The Corner, February 12, 2007
I am here to speak on freedom of speech. It is a great topic, and I am going to make my speech as free as possible. But you know that this cannot be done, for when anyone announces that he is going to speak his mind freely, everyone is frightened. This shows that there is no such thing as true freedom of speech. No one can afford to let his neighbors know what he is thinking about them. Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.
LIN YUTANG
lecture, Mar. 4, 1933
I do not claim that I have floated level with the heights of thought, or that I have descended to the very depths of things. I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber. That is all.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
A Fable for Critics
Publishing on the Internet is different than importing and exporting books, magazines, and newspapers. The Internet is a new forum, and there is something unprecedented in the idea of simultaneous, low-cost publication available to readers around the world. Speakers reach listeners in many places where they never could have been heard before. Listeners have access to the speech of individuals who may have a freedom to publish that is unknown in the listener's own country. Speakers and listeners will lose these benefits if Internet speech regulation is left to the determination of the most restrictive states. We also lose these benefits if regulation is so unpredictable as to make Internet speech more risky than warranted by the potential rewards it offers.
SAMUEL PETER NELSON
Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and Pluralism
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
London Guardian, November 8, 1990
Freedom of speech is sacred in and of itself, but also in the cause of defeating the worse ideologies.
TOM ROGAN
Washington Examiner, June 5, 2019
So, dear friend, put fear out of your heart. This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold--by voice, by posted card, by letter or by press. Reason never has failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
"To an Anxious Friend", The Emporia Gazette, July 27, 1922
Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being "pushed to an extreme", not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.
JOHN STUART MILL
On Liberty
So long as you are a slave to the opinions of the many you have not yet approached freedom or tasted its nectar.
JULIAN
The Works of Emperor Julian
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.
EURIPIDES
The Phoenician Women
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is "not done" to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was "not done" to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.
GEORGE ORWELL
"The Freedom of the Press", 1972
Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ
Finding, Framing, and Hanging Jefferson
Free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point where no one can hear you.
NAOMI KLEIN
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