Speak, speak, speak, & remember that whenever anyone's liberty to speak is denied, your liberty is denied also, & your place is where the attack is.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of free speech and standing up for others' rights to speak.
Voltairine De Cleyre advocates for the necessity of speaking out, especially when others are oppressed or denied their freedom of expression. She highlights that true liberty is interconnected; if one person's right to speak is suppressed, it threatens everyone's freedom, and thus, one must actively defend and support those who are silenced.
In practice
In a debate about censorship, this quote can underline the importance of defending speech rights.
Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship.
Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license," and they will define freedom out of existence.
I think it can be shown that the law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
The question of souls is oldβwe demand our bodies, now. We are tired of promises, god is deaf, and his church is our worst enemy.
Is it not enough that 'things are cruel and blind'? Must we also be cruel and blind?
Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before.
Resistance to oppression is second nature.
Someone said on social media that I was the son of Satan for being open about my sexuality. I told my mother, and she laughed and said, 'Well, what the hell does that make me?'
I'm from Anderson, S.C., but I grew up in the South. So I know what it is to ride to school and have Confederate flags flying from trucks in front of me and behind me, to see a parking lot full of people with Confederate flags and know what that means. I've been stopped by police for no reason.
Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage.
Whenever I get stuck on something, I'm like, 'What would I do if I wasn't afraid? What would I write if I wasn't afraid? What would I say in this situation if I wasn't afraid?'
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
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