Free Discussion Quotes

#1. Peace adores above everything free discussion and expression without intimidation.

Bryant McGill

#2. Freedom and order are not incompatible ... truth is strength ... free discussion is the very life of truth.

Thomas Huxley

#3. When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand.

William Randolph Hearst

#4. Let the poor man count as his enemy, and his worst enemy, every invader of the right of free discussion.

Gerrit Smith

#5. Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any suggestion of authority or even respect.

Hyman Rickover

#6. We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound, the spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.

Abraham Flexner

#7. Paradoxically, Islam is the most decentralized and yet, at the same time, the most rigid religion in the world. Everyone feels entitled to rule out free discussion.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

#8. The justification and the purpose of freedom of speech is not to indulge those who want to speak their minds. It is to prevent error and discover truth. There may be other ways of detecting error and discovering truth than that of free discussion, but so far we have not found them.

Henry Steele Commager

#9. The argument against the persecution of opinion does not depend upon what the excuse for persecution may be. The argument is that we none of us know all truth, that the discovery of new truth is promoted by free discussion and rendered very difficult by suppression.

Bertrand Russell

#10. In action, the English have the advantage enjoyed by free men always entitled to free discussion: of having a ready judgment on every question. We Germans, on the other hand, are always thinking. We think so much that we never form a judgment.

Heinrich Heine

#11. Free discussion is the only necessary Constitution - the only necessary Law of the Constitution.

Richard Carlile

#12. The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.

George Soros

#13. EQUAL RIGHTS and FREE DISCUSSION will be fearlessly advocated and maintained. Sectarian dogmas or tenets will be investigated and compared.

Abner Cole

#14. Before Vatican II, in theology, as in other areas, the discipline was fixed. After the council there has been a revolution - a chaotic revolution - with free discussion on everything. There is now no common theology or philosophy as there was before.

Godfried Danneels

#15. The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion.

Learned Hand

#16. The theory of the free press is not that the truth will be presented completely or perfectly in any one instance, but that the truth will emerge from free discussion

E. E. Cummings

#17. I believe one of the reasons we went through such a remarkable growth period was that we had this atmosphere of free discussion.

Akio Morita

#18. There is one class of men, whom it especially behoves to be tenacious of the right of free discussion. I mean the poor.

Gerrit Smith

#19. If the discussion centres on the essential principle of the E.U., the free movement of people and the ability to make decisions together, in that case, we don't want treaty change.

Francois Hollande

#20. It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.

William O. Douglas

#21. If I believe we need free personal care, we need an honest discussion about what it costs with a well-managed, well-trained workforce.

Johann Lamont

#22. Let's consider a series of lessons that lay the groundwork for our discussion of breaking free. I will list them as nine lessons about captivity and freedom. LESSON 1 The people of God can be oppressed by the enemy.

Beth Moore

#23. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
[Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927)]

Louis D. Brandeis

#24. All ideas in a truly free society should always be open for discussion.

Bryant McGill

#25. Certainly anything that is news or opinion needs to be free on the Web, because the Web is this very fluid medium that is very much driven by links and the flow of visitors through a discussion via links.

Fred Wilson

#26. In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion.

James Reston

#27. Force loses its legitimacy when it is used instead of free and open discussion.

Gustavo De Greiff

#28. In retrospect, the highlight of dating him had been free coffee and a particularly compelling discussion on the fall of the Roman Empire.

Richelle Mead

#29. While I sign off on trades or free agents, I've rarely overruled my basketball people's decisions. But I'm not shy about steering the discussion or pushing deeper if something doesn't make sense to me.

Paul Allen

#30. We are all Julian Assange. Serious reporters discuss classified information every day - go to any Washington or New York dinner party where real journalists are present, and you will hear discussion of leaked or classified information. That is journalists' job in a free society.

Naomi Wolf