First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must...

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]

It’s a great country: you can say whatever you like so long as it is strictly true–nobody will ever take you seriously.

With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words,...

In terms of free speech, there are questions which are much more important than this.

The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions...

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...

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. [p.92]

The censor’s sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the...

[T]he imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.

Every man — in the development of his own personality — has the right to form his own beliefs and opinions. Hence, suppression of belief, opinion and expression is an affront to the dignity of...

Do not make the mistake of thinking that you have to agree with people and their beliefs to defend them from injustice.

Those who claim to be hurt by words must be led to expect nothing as compensation. Otherwise, once they learn they can get something by claiming to be hurt, they will go into the business...

To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men.

Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read. If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of...

We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad...

Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges—have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of...

Oil may run out, liquidity may dry up, but as long as ink flows freely, the next chapter of Life will continue to be written.

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...

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the...

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.

I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of...

Free speech means the right to shout ‘theatre’ in a crowded fire.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an...

Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?

The hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so...

Article 191. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of...

You can’t talk about fucking in America, people say you’re dirty. But if you talk about killing somebody, that’s cool.

If the first words out of your mouth are to cry ‘political correctness!’, … chances are very, very high that you are in fact part of the problem.

All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let’s get back...

On peut rire de tout mais pas avec n’importe qui.

I don’t care if they are reading our mail. Bring it on, Tron! I dare you. Try to take away my freedom of expression. I’m a journalist. A free-speech warrior. I serve in the Army...

I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy…But I...

Yawns are not the only infectious things out there besides germs.Giggles can spread from person to person.So can blushing.But maybe the most powerful infectious thing is the act of speaking the truth.

When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine’s Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was,...

Truthfully, wicked people reveal themselves in words first, to inhibit speech would inhibit us seeing the wicked before they act.

Our country is the only one that truly permits you to speak bad of your country, so you really shouldn’t say anything bad about it.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

Potentially, anyone writing on the Web can reach a global audience. In practice, hardly anyone ever does.

A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists.Don’t let a loud few determine the nature...

Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I...

[I]n my own case at least I feel my professional need for freedom of speech and expression prejudices me toward a government whose constitution guarantees it.

Feminism, which is supposedly for everybody, apparently has no place for conservative women. Why would feminists need to exclude entire swaths of the population? Because they know their ideology cannot stand up to challenges, they...

It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning;...

When society gives censors wide and vague powers they never confine themselves to deserving targets. They are not snipers, but machine-gunners. Allow them to fire at will, and they will hit anything that moves.

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues.

The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.

From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a...