Top 100 Quotes About Free Speech
#1. Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'.
Richard Stallman
#2. Let us always remember that he does not really believe his own opinion, who dares not give free scope to his opponent.
Wendell Phillips
#3. Free speech is the cornerstone to every right we have.
Mark Thomas
#4. I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.
Peggy Noonan
#5. The fact that we're protected under that Constitution in exercising the right of free speech, it's a wonderful thing. You've got to come from somewhere else to realize how valuable it is.
Pat Oliphant
#6. When Minutemen leader Jim Gilchrist and his black colleague Marvin Stewart were invited by the College Republicans to speak at Columbia last year, the tolerant, free-speech-loving Columbia students violently attacked them, shutting down the speech.
Ann Coulter
#7. Probably no other country in the 1920s - certainly not the United States, with its stark repression of the Left, vicious antiunion policies, and legally enshrined racism - had so wide a range of free speech, such a vital public sphere, as Germany.
Eric D. Weitz
#8. Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.
Denis Leary
#10. Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.
Timothy Snyder
#11. We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations.
Hank Johnson
#12. Words cannot only be made ... But made to have a meaning, free the tongue and continue your speech.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#13. Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.
Herbert Hoover
#14. Free speech is a restraint on government; not an incitement to the citizen.
David McCullough
#15. Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics ... derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.
Benjamin Franklin
#16. Satire dramatizes better than any other use of it, the inherent contradiction of free speech that it functions best when what is being said is at its most outrageous.
Tony Hendra
#17. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
Salman Rushdie
#18. To be free from all egoistic motive, careful of truth in speech and action, void of self-will and self-assertion, watchful in all things, is the condition for being a flawless servant.
Sri Aurobindo
#19. There is no danger is letting people have their say ... There is a danger when you try to stop them from saying it.
Helen Gahagan Douglas
#20. Aggressive civil disobedience should be confined to a vindication of the right of free speech and free association.
Mahatma Gandhi
#21. It is my responsibility to make sure that the fear is overcome ... This attack must instead free our speech about Islamic fundamentalism. We must not be silenced.
Marine Le Pen
#22. If we think to regulat Printing, thereby to rectifie manners, we must regulat all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightfull to Man.
John Milton
#23. Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech.
Mark Twain
#24. Free speech is not a bogus issue. It is an issue.
Wayne Rogers
#25. The virtue of a democratic system with a [constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly.
Antonin Scalia
#26. Evaluating countries is senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but that some of America's advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired.
Noam Chomsky
#27. I'm defending free speech pretty much all over the place because you still have freedom of speech.
Larry The Cable Guy
#28. The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silence - free of the networks of dead speech.
Freya Stark
#29. The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.
Voltaire
#30. We are unalterably opposed to the presentation of the female body being stripped, bound, raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered in the name of commercial entertainment and free speech
Susan Brownmiller
#31. The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Hubert H. Humphrey
#32. We civilians defend our own right to free speech. The military in Iraq does not defend our right to free speech.
Medea Benjamin
#33. Comedy clubs are arguably one of the last bastions of uncensored, public free speech.
Ted Alexandro
#34. We've got to stand up not only for free speech, but also for all that we've inherited from the Enlightenment and from Christianity.
Roger Scruton
#35. I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs -including my own- on nonbelievers.
Barack Obama
#36. When there is a world scarcity of any commodity, whether it's food or free speech, then the whole world must go on rations in order that eventually the whole world may have it again in plenty.
Jan Struther
#37. It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation.
Adolf Hitler
#38. You know what it's like - you see someone on the train screaming awful, racist things and think, 'How can I protect this person's right to free speech?
Tony Abbott
#39. Even in democratic society, we don't have good answers how to balance the need for security on one hand and the protection of free speech on the other in our digital networks.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#40. Swedish democracy is based on a single premise: the Right to Free Speech (R.F.S.).
Stieg Larsson
#41. Aside from the collective gain that comes from that free interchange of ideas, there is a direct personal value for the individual concerned. Each of us should have the right to speak his thoughts and to hear the thoughts of others ...
Charles Rembar
#42. I don't understand why they call it public broadcasting. As far as I am concerned, there's nothing public about it; it's an elitist enterprise. 'Rush Limbaugh' is public broadcasting.
Newt Gingrich
#43. How the press, for example, loves to brag to its victims - its readers - about its freedom. Yes, the press may be free to lie and distort and suppress and deceive and malign, but is it free to tell the truth?
Willis Carto
#44. There are no bad haircuts in cyberspace.
Dave Barry
#45. The right to free speech is important but it isn't as important as 'we're all human beings together, let's find solutions together.'
Russell Brand
#46. I believe that sensitivity to issues of race and ethnicity is important, and nuanced, even more so when it intersects with the issue of free speech.
Gene Weingarten
#47. I think people loosely use the term 'free speech.' If the market wants to be such that people don't want to watch someone, so be it.
Greta Van Susteren
#48. I like something with 'vice' in it.
Ted Turner
#49. I am a technological activist. I have a political agenda. I am in favor of basic human rights: to free speech, to use any information and technology, to purchase and use recreational drugs, to enjoy and purchase so-called 'vices', to be free of intruders, and to privacy.
Bram Cohen
#50. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.
Herbert Hoover
#51. The case for democracy is not esthetic.
George Will
#52. Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.
Abbie Hoffman
#53. Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.
Noam Chomsky
#54. The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.
Immanuel Kant
#55. To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G.K. Chesterton
#56. 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.
Lucy Stone
#57. The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
H.L. Mencken
#58. Moderate people are able to be moderate and have free speech only because there are some people on the fringe.
Patrick Chappatte
#59. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
U.S. Congress
#60. I prefer a little free speech to no free speech at all; but how many have free speech or the chance or the mind for it; and is not free speech here as elsewhere clamped down on in ratio of its freedom and danger?
James Agee
#61. Everybody favours free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.
Heywood Broun
#62. In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.
Noam Chomsky
#64. There is no such thing as absolute free speech; there are only absolute rights of private property. Speech is circumscribed by private property rights. You may deliver a disquisition in my virtual or actual living room only if I permit you to so do.
Ilana Mercer
#65. And, I hope now that everybody understands that the Labour Party - as it always has done - stands for free speech and individual Members of the Labour Party are entitled to exercise that free speech.
Ron Davies
#66. But the path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I
Mahatma Gandhi
#67. Question everything - ban nothing
Mick Hume
#68. Not slaves," said Halyard, chuckling patronizingly. "Citizens, employed by government. They have same rights as other citizens - free speech, freedom of worship, the right to vote. Before the war, they worked in the Ilium Works, controlling machines, but now machines control themselves much better.
Anonymous
#69. If we do not believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we do not believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky
#70. It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.
Herbert Hoover
#71. They [left-wingers] willy-nilly throw around the accusation of Nazism and comparisons to Hitler whenever confronted by any opposition, yet they are today's Nazis in their determination to shut down by threats or violence free speech and assembly.
Steve McCann
#72. It's not Big Brother that we now have to be afraid of, but Big Browser.
Eliot Spitzer
#73. Democratization is not democracy; it is a slogan for the temporary liberalization handed down from an autocrat. Glasnost is not free speech; only free speech, constitutionally guaranteed, is free speech.
Gail Sheehy
#74. Obama will win the 2012 election, thanks in part to the tech community rallying behind him due to issues like SOPA, visas, and free speech.
John Battelle
#75. Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
William O. Douglas
#76. Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversity of opinion, the values of a given society will uncannily match those of whichever organizations have the scale to pay for runs of thirty-second slots around the nightly news bulletin.
Alain De Botton
#77. Please wake me when I'm free
I cannot bear captivity
4 I would rather be stricken blind
Than 2 live without expression of mind
Tupac Shakur
#78. EQUAL RIGHTS and FREE DISCUSSION will be fearlessly advocated and maintained. Sectarian dogmas or tenets will be investigated and compared.
Abner Cole
#79. [T]he imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.
George Orwell
#80. The principle of free speech is no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. It is a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserve so long as they hope to live as free men.
Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
#81. The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.
Christopher Hitchens
#82. Freedom of speech means setting words free. Imprisoned and freed words are consequential. All words have consequences. Restrain and release words with respect for their consequentialness.
John R. Dallas Jr.
#83. But in reality the point of free speech is for the stuff that's over the line, and strikingly unbalanced. If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn't free at all. So screw that.
Mark Steyn
#84. Feminists often pretend to be angry and offended in order to win debates or, I should say, prevent debates from ever happening. If you can act angry and offended, especially on a college campus, you can shut down the other side using a speech code.
Mike Adams
#85. 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.
Aryeh Neier
#86. Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.
Neal Boortz
#87. If our hard-earned liberty, our desire to be irreverent of the old and to question the new, can be reduced to one, basic and indispensable right, it must be the right to free speech.
Maajid Nawaz
#88. A free society is one where it's safe to be unpopular, but then, freedom of speech also carries with it the freedom not to listen!
Ashwin Sanghi
#89. Potentially, anyone writing on the Web can reach a global audience. In practice, hardly anyone ever does.
Nick Cohen
#90. Free speech is one of the founding principles of our republic.
Andrew Rosenthal
#91. It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish ... to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
Outside The Whale (Granta, 1984)
Salman Rushdie
#92. Speech doesn't corrupt. Money corrupts, and money isn't speech.
Russ Feingold
#93. Fashion is free speech, and one of the privileges, if not always one of the pleasures, of a free world
Alison Lurie
#94. There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee
#95. My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.
Ma Jian
#96. What is the point of having free speech if you have nothing to say?
John Hagee
#97. The Supreme Court decided that corporations are people and they have the right of free speech and the right without disclosure - all of this is through the Citizens United Supreme Court decision - to put as much money as they want into campaigns all over the country.
Bernie Sanders
#99. Everyone who is critical of Israeli policy is deluged by crazed messages intended to flood their email system or, more insidiously, passwords are accessed and messages sent out under their name! I'm sure it's illegal. It's also an effort to undermine free speech.
Noam Chomsky
#100. All Citizens United did was to level the playing field for corporate speech. We now have, I think, the most free and open system we've had in modern times.
Mitch McConnell
