Quotes about Freedom of Speech

quotes
22
authors
20
Origin
What do these mean?
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
MisattributedNot by Voltaire. Earliest known source: Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire (1906). · evidenceFreedom of Speech
“If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
VerifiedNoam Chomsky in interview by John Pilger on The Late Show BBC Television, November 25, 1992 . · evidenceFreedom of Speech
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
Freedom of Speech
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
Freedom of Speech
“We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.”
Freedom of Speech
“Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.”
Freedom of Speech
“How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.”
VerifiedPeople demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid. · evidenceFreedom of Speech
“In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.”
Freedom of Speech
“When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward -- or go back. He who now talks about the ''freedom of the press'' goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.”
Freedom of Speech
“We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, ''That man is a Red, that man is a Communist.'' You never heard a real American talk in that manner.”
Freedom of Speech
“We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.”
Freedom of Speech
“The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.”
Freedom of Speech