Free Speech Quotes

The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children.

People think I watch TV too much, but they are wrong. There is a huge difference between merely "watching" TV and learning to respond aggressively to it. The difference, for most people, is the difference between the living and dying of their own brains.

Occasionally, the book tells stories that would likely grate on senior management – but that is what free speech is all about.

Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.

I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society.

You can always spot a well informed man his views are the same as yours.

The net poses a fundamental threat not only to the authority of the government, but to all authority, because it permits people to organize, think, and influence one another without any institutional supervision whatsoever.

I will gladly go to jail in the name of free speech. I have no problem with what I said. Make me a martyr.

Everybody has a different Internet.

The part that frightens the hell out of me is the goverment deciding where technology goes.

The case for democracy is not esthetic.

You have to organize, organize, organize, and build and build, and train and train, so that there is a permanent, vibrant structure of which people can be part.

Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks.

Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.

There is stupid. And then there is cyberstupid.

Life is a process which may be abstracted from other media.

I love the Constitution and government of this land, but I hate the damned rascals that administer the government.

Trying to control information in the network age is about as successful as pissing into the wind.

Linking without permission is stealing. Period, end of story.

We can literally unplug a country from the Internet. We ought to think about unplugging them.

I want the ability to monitor high-tech communications among far-flung terrorists. I want to be able to have our people learn their plans before they strike. That's the key.

To protest free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong.

Free speech is a great idea, but were in a war.

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.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.

I used to feel like I was a flea on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now I feel I might be a small yapping poodle on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

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.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

It will allow us to control all the communication needs of a household with one device.

If pornographers are among the early adopters of the new technology, then it has definite commercial possibilities.

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.

The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

Frankly, the people probably most interested in having computer lists on disk are junk mail vendors and solicitors.

Fertilizer played a greater role in this case than computers.

There is something sexy about a computer nerd.

It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom," it is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People's Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech.

Jail is just another micro-society. It just happens that here, the problems are far more out in the open, we don't live with the facades of lies that democracy or capitalism creates for us.

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.

I'm a big believer in free speech. Common Sense's motto is sanity, not censorship. But I'm over the age of 18, and we can handle that, and you can, too. But I don't want that game marketed to an 11-year-old or a 12-year-old, and that's what's happened. And so there are extraordinary changes that should happen, first of all voluntarily by the industry, and, second, that kind of marketing and sales practice can be regulated by the Federal Trade Commission.

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.

The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole Swaraj.

In our efforts to battle terrorism and cyber attacks and biological weapons, all of us must be extremely aggressive. We must protect our people from danger and keep America safe and free.

A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that.

[Michael] Brown's mom, Lesley McSpadden, is the latest African American mother whose tear-streaked face forces the nation to remember the name of yet another unarmed black teenager gunned down under questionable circumstances.

If you come to me and say, 'Hey look I'm a racist,' or 'I discriminate against blacks,' or 'I don't like you because you're African American,' I respect that. I can respect you more by doing that. But don't smile in my face, shake my hand, and then you don't really respect me, or want me to be around, or come to your games as the owner of the Clippers.