One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.
Timothy Garton AshRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote addresses the challenge of balancing free speech with respect for others in a world dominated by rapid communication.
In the context of our modern society, where communication occurs instantly and widely, the quote emphasizes the importance of finding a middle ground between exercising the right to free speech and maintaining mutual respect. It suggests that responding to hostility with hostility only escalates conflicts and implies that a more thoughtful, respectful approach is needed to navigate disagreements and differing opinions.
Themes
Free SpeechRespectCommunicationBalanceConflict
In practice
Example use cases
During a panel discussion on civil discourse, one might invoke this quote to emphasize the need for respectful dialogue.
More from Timothy Garton Ash
All quotes →Developments in information technology and globalised media mean that the most powerful military in the history of the world can lose a war, not on the battlefield of dust and blood, but on the battlefield of world opinion.
Timothy Garton AshRead
Similar quotes
Rest enough for the individual man, too much and too soon, and we call it death. But for man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet and all its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and, at last, out across immensities to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deep space, and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.
H. G. WellsRead
It is the man who can think of no alternative to his enslavement who is truly a slave.
Wendell BerryRead
Awareness, beholding the mind, is the most essential method to have a breakthrough. And once you have gone just a step beyond the mind, you have entered the world of nirvana, you have entered the world of light and eternal life. You have attained to spiritual integrity, freedom, and tremendous ecstasy which the mind cannot even dream about.
RajneeshRead
No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth
William ShakespeareRead
Having never left the house you are looking for the way home
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
We are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars and the form of a galaxy.
Alan WattsRead