Quotes on Free Speech

The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.

The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.

The United States is a land of free speech. Nowhere is speech freer - not even here where we sedulously cultivate it even in its most repulsive form.

Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

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.

We don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.

In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. It is time to get fierce.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

I speak the password primeval; I give the sign of democracy.

In America-as elsewhere-free speech is confined to the dead.

Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in free speech? Then speak freely. Do you love the truth? Then tell it. Do you believe in an open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely.

I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned.

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.