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.
Do right and risk the consequences.
When there is oppression and dictatorship, by not speaking out, we lose our dignity.
Fighter pilots have ice in their veins. They don't have emotions. They think, anticipate. They know that fear and other concerns cloud your mind from what's going on and what you should be involved in.
If something's just, I'll let myself be hacked to bits for it.
Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, therefore no harm can befall you; all is very, very well. Do this in complete faith and confidence.
I dare not so honor my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this know, I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two.
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