Free press is not absolute. In this country, we say clearly if you start stirring up racial hatred, then we will put a stop to it. We might even close down your paper, because these things can only lead to a lot of riots and bloodshed.
Interpretation
The free press has limitations, particularly when it promotes hate that can lead to violence.
This quote by Mahathir Mohamad emphasizes that while a free press is essential for democracy, it is not without boundaries. The speaker asserts that the press has a responsibility to avoid inciting racial hatred, as such actions can result in serious social unrest and violence, highlighting the need for a balance between freedom of expression and social responsibility.
In practice
During a debate on media responsibilities, this quote can highlight the limits of press freedom.
I believe that every leader has a right to implement his own policy. But when I see things that are done that are not right - abuse of power, wrong approaches, wrong strategies, making use of foreign consultants, including those discarded by other countries - I feel that I have to have my say.
If you want to be honest with yourself, you have to take criticism, even if you attract adverse comments from others.
It would seem the people who want to preserve the Penans' way of life are condemning them to a life full of diseases and a shorter life span.
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Independence means we enjoy freedom. We are not colonised by people. And we can govern our own country and develop it independently so that our people can live a better life.
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well. It were done quickly.
There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology.
The world of the 20th century, if it is to come to life in any viability of health and vigor, must be to a significant degree an American century.
Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.
As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday.
The fact that so many people choose to live in ways that narrow the community of fate to a very limited set of others and to define the rest as threatening to their way of life and values is deeply worrying because this contemporary form of tribalism, and the ideologies that support it, enable them to deny complex and more crosscutting mutual interdependencies-local, national, and international-and to elude their own role in creating long-term threats to their own wellbeing and that of others.
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