Top 100 Quotes About Free Speech
#1. Worrying that banning flag desecration would inhibit free speech reveals a misunderstanding of the flag's fundamental nature.
Adrian Cronauer
#2. I don't think we should be deprived of the privilege of free speech.
Loretta Swit
#3. 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.
Timothy Garton Ash
#4. Free speech gives us the ability to react vigorously with effective arguments and expose the weakness and misdirection of the other side's claims.
Rush Limbaugh
#5. Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
#6. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community.
Paula Poundstone
#7. The price of liberty is, in addition to eternal vigilance, eternal patience with the vacuous blather occasionally expressed from behind the shield of free speech.
Michael Shermer
#8. Free thought, free speech and a free press.
Anne Royall
#9. Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.
Theodore Roosevelt
#10. The remedy for the abuse of free speech is more speech.
Mike Godwin
#11. Free speech isn't dead in Germany and Italy, merely the speakers ...
Bob Hope
#12. Free speech and freedom of the press are under attack in the U.K. I cannot return to England, my country, because of my journalistic work with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and at WikiLeaks. There are things I feel I cannot even write.
Sarah Harrison
#13. I am broadly concerned about the slow death of free speech, but particularly in universities and also with regards to the climate change debate.
Judith Curry
#14. Comics definitely embody the importance of practicing free speech.
Ted Alexandro
#15. we need to stand up for our own principles as liberals. Specifically, we need to say to offended Western Muslims (and their liberal supporters) that it is not we who must accommodate their beliefs and sensitivities. Rather, it is they who must learn to live with our commitment to free speech.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
#16. The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
H.L. Mencken
#17. Corporation: a miniature totalitarian state governed by a hierarchy of unelected officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies.
Rick Bayan
#18. There is no free speech in football. Information is parsed by monosyllabic head coaches, who dictate who gets to speak to whom and when.
Jane Leavy
#19. If there is no free speech, every single life has lived in vain
Ai Weiwei
#20. A theory deeply etched in our law [is that] a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse the rights of free speech after they break the law rather than to throttle them and all others beforehand.
Clarence Thomas
#21. However, they ignore the fact that the First Amendment is intended to protect only against government sanctions for exercising free speech rights, not private actions.
Ed Koch
#22. For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; that we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious
or whatever we please; we are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution.
Naomi Wolf
#23. One man's blasphemy doesn't override other people's free-speech rights, their freedom to publish, freedom of thought.
Dan Savage
#24. If Thomas Jefferson had heard us, he probably would have said, 'We shouldn't have free speech.'
Robin Quivers
#25. 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.
Winston Churchill
#26. Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
[The One Un-American Act, Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)]
William O. Douglas
#27. Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.
Thomas Sowell
#28. The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole Swaraj.
Mahatma Gandhi
#29. All the big powers they've silenced me. So much for free speech and choice on this fundamental human right.
Jack Kevorkian
#30. With true free speech has to come an understanding of when and when not to use it. But you can't legislate that. It must be voluntary - especially in a world where a whisper can reach a million people in an eye blink.
Nick Harkaway
#31. O ignorant world that brutishly denies
Free speech unto the exquisitely wise!
Omar Khayyam
#32. In terms of political contributions, the free speech rights of corporations I don't think deserve the same protections as the free speech rights of real living, breathing, voting humans.
Chris Coons
#33. Supreme Court opinion notwithstanding, corporations are not defined as people under the Constitution, and free speech can hardly be called free when only the rich are heard.
Warren Rudman
#34. Beyond all the other reasons not to do it, free speech assaults always backfire: they transform bigots into martyrs.
Glenn Greenwald
#35. It is not easy to describe the present position of legal opinion on advertising and free speech. Only a poet can capture the essence of chaos.
Bill Vaughan
#36. Since Humanism as a functioning credo is so closely bound up with the methods of reason and science, plainly free speech and democracy are its very lifeblood. For reason and scientific method can flourish only in an atmosphere of civil liberties.
Corliss Lamont
#37. Corporations have free speech, but they can't speak like you and me. They don't have mouths or hands ...
Stephen Colbert
#38. University of California students can look forward to the same authoritarian management style Secretary Napolitano brought to the Department of Homeland Security, hardly a bastion of free speech and open government.
Doug LaMalfa
#39. Not only was one cartoonist gunned down, but riots erupted around the world, resulting in the deaths of scores. No one could say toward what positive social end, yet free speech absolutists were unchastened.
Garry Trudeau
#40. I can't curse those who don't believe as I do. I can't express hate or disdain for those who criticize what I hold dear. I can't outshout, bully, or taunt them. I can't exercise the liberty of free speech because I answer to a higher law.
I answer to the Word of God.
Lori Hatcher
#43. Faced with a brass band that was positioned to drown out free speech, Russian activists reacted to the potential confrontation with lemons. With activists eating lemons or pretending to, involuntary saliva reaction of the band made it impossible for them to interrupt.
Masha Gessen
#44. There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans ... and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.
Henry Ward Beecher
#45. Free markets are a tool, free speech is a goal.
Tim Bray
#46. Any kind of restrictions put on free speech would have worse consequences than bullying.
Lady Starlight
#47. Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#48. Citizens United fought to defend our right to free speech - and won a great victory in the United States Supreme Court.
Marsha Blackburn
#49. Nobody is capable of of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to learned and worked at. [p.93]
Northrop Frye
#50. Take free speech: most of the tough cases on free speech involve very unpleasant people saying very obnoxious things.
Barney Frank
#51. Free speech includes the right to not speak.
Jimmy Wales
#52. The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship.
Joichi Ito
#53. It's always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It's much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent.
Glenn Greenwald
#54. Money is speech. It's incongruous to say a multimillionaire can spend as much on his own campaign as he wants, but you can only give $2,300. His free speech rights are different from yours, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. It's absurd.
Roger Stone
#55. We must never forget that if the war in Vietnam is lost ... the right of free speech will be extinguished throughout the world.
Richard M. Nixon
#56. The goal is to give people a free encyclopedia to every person in the world, in their own language. Not just in a 'free beer' kind of way, but also in the free speech kind of way.
Jimmy Wales
#57. The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.
Bell Hooks
#59. You get to say that the Earth is flat because we live in a country that guarantees your free speech. But it's not a country that guarantees that anything you say is correct.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#60. King as thou art, free speech at least is mine. To make reply; in this I am thy peer.
Sophocles
#61. Free Speech in the College Community is a very timely book written by a dedicated scholar of the First Amendment. Challenging and readable it should be studied by all academicians, students, legislators and lawyers.
Nancy Kassebaum
#62. You should protest about the views of people you disagree with over major moral issues, and argue them down, but you should not try to silence them, however repugnant you find them. That is the bitter pill free speech requires us to swallow.
Julian Baggini
#63. Poking fun at other people's beliefs, while it may seem frivolous and offensive, is a non-negotiable right. It is a principle that underpins free speech, the basis for progress.
Maajid Nawaz
#64. The durability of free speech and free press rests on the simple concept that it search for the truth and tell the truth.
Herbert Hoover
#65. Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.
Winston S. Churchill
#66. I will gladly go to jail in the name of free speech. I have no problem with what I said. Make me a martyr ...
Joey Barton
#67. What yells out at the US public ... is the incandescent hypocrisy of so many people who, in the name of free speech, persecute its practitioners if their opinions are conservative.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#68. I don't know, people take chances on stage. It's a big free speech zone, a comedy show. So sometimes things happen, you say things that are a little bit off the edge.
Drew Carey
#69. I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.
Randall Munroe
#70. While even pornography is protected as free speech, the courts have consciously undermined religious speech and freedom of religion for years.
Ernest Istook
#71. Net neutrality was essential for our economy; it was essential to preserve freedom and openness, both for economic reasons and free speech reasons, and the government had a role in ensuring that Internet freedom was protected.
Julius Genachowski
#72. In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedomwhen 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.
Tim Robbins
#73. However, declining interest in protest activities and campus governance should not be taken as a sign that students are uncommitted to the right of free speech or the right to demonstrate on campus. In fact, they are stronger believers in these rights than many of their predecessors.
Arthur Levine
#74. Every other basic right, such as the Formation of Government and the Right to Freedom of Organization, are simply practical extensions of the Right to Free Speech. On this law democracy stands or falls.
Stieg Larsson
#75. I've skewered whites, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, straights, rednecks, addicts, the elderly, and my wife. As a standup comic, it is my job to make sure the majority of people laugh, and I believe that comedy is the last true form of free speech.
Jeff Dunham
#76. I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.
H.L. Mencken
#77. One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.
Salman Rushdie
#78. You have the right to free speech. We, the corporate controlled government, have the right to ignore you and we choose to exercise this right.
Steven Magee
#79. I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you're allowed to censor it.
Dana Carvey
#80. Free speech is one of our fundamental principles and it's pretty hard to speak freely when people are yelling at you when it's your turn. That would never be allowed in a classroom or in any other kind of meeting.
Jack Layton
#81. Free speech has a very small constituency on the modern campus, particularly if the speaker under attack is conservative.
John Leo
#82. Free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point where no one can hear you.
Naomi Klein
#83. The Internet is a powerful example of free speech and the free market in action; it is curious that the Net has alarmed the lawmakers of a nation founded on those principles.
Denise Caruso
#84. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Frederick Douglass
#85. I actually think it is people like myself who have been fighting for our rights to free speech and I would like the right to defend my own right to free speech, not have soldiers doing it for me. I don't think I need soldiers.
Medea Benjamin
#86. the subversion of free speech and free thought are the worst forms of subversion.
William Douglas
#87. Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.
Liu Xiaobo
#88. In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.
Muriel Rukeyser
#89. Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being "pushed to an extreme", not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.
John Stuart Mill
#90. I am not content to entrust our free-speech rights to the good graces and whims of Congress and hope that politicians don't abuse their power.
Ted Cruz
#91. The story of Daniel Lord and the Legion of Decency goes to a central contention of this book: in the United States, it is industrial structure that determines the limits of free speech.
Tim Wu
#92. It's obvious that I come down on the side of free speech for anybody's work.
Salman Rushdie
#93. The Founding Fathers' instructions were clear: The right to free speech includes bad speech; it means tolerance of ideas that many find obnoxious.
David Ignatius
#94. We need to understand that an open society and free speech and press ... really are the best weapons against al Qaeda and extremism.
Elliott Abrams
#95. Maybe when they no longer receive Sierra magazine in their mailboxes, journalists will understand how campaign finance reform abridges free speech.
Matt Welch
#96. The best legacy I can leave my children is free speech, and the example of using it.
Philip Sidney
#97. Free speech is meaningless unless it tolerates the speech that we hate.
Henry Hyde
#98. Free speech carries with it the evil of all foolish, unpleasant venomous things that are said but, on the whole, we would rather lump them than do away with them.
Winston Churchill
#99. If you're not going to use your free speech to criticize your own government, then what the hell is the point of having it?
Michel Templet
#100. Now is the time to draw a clean, clear, bright line and say if you are engaging in speech over the Internet you do not have to check with your lawyer or your accountant. You are a free American, and you have the opportunity to engage in free speech over the Internet.
John Doolittle
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
