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...

Both groups [of pundits] were critics, and that is the heart of the problem. If you are a pundit, you seem so smart when you are telling the President what he did wrong… This [is]...

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.

Folk bør ha rett til å fremsette feilaktige eller avskyelige påstander, men man er da også i sin fulle rett til å hevde at det de sier er feilaktig og avskyelig.

Vi har noen rettigheter, plikter og verdier vi tar som en selvfølge. Men også selvfølgelighetene må begrunnes og forsvares. De oppleste og vedtatte sannhetene har godt av å bli utfordret, ikke minst for å gi...

It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.

[T]here is both an intrinsic and instrumental value to privacy. Intrinsically, privacy is precious to the extent that it is a component of a liberty. Part of citizenship in a free society is the expectation...

Don’t be surprised if I try to stab you with a club sandwich sword. I will defend your right to free speech at any cost—including killing you.

De som har makt over ordene bør være edru blant de rasende.

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”[Whitney v. California, 274...

Hvis du tar til orde for at Europa en gang skal bli fritt for muslimer, tar du samtidig til orde, i beste fall, for en tvangsdeportering av mer enn femti millioner mennesker vekk fra det...

I detect the activist returning with a vengence.

redneck” the last time it would be said.

The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I...

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...