Freedom of speech is not only the right to say as you please, it is also the right to have what you say contested, and where it does not accord with reason – refuted, or...

Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.

If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission.

I am afflicted with the power of thought, which is a heavy curse. The less a person thinks and inquires regarding the why and the wherefore and the justice of things, when dragging along through...

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...

La liberté de l’esprit est le seul bien, peut-être, qui soit plus précieux que la paix. C’est que la paix, sans elle, n’est que servitude.

It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

If you try to tame her she will fly away, because pretty little spirits like her, never like to be caged.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable...

Free yourself from any emotional trauma. Dwell on positive thoughts, the strength for your soul.

Your silent rebellion is unstoppable.

Beware: open-mindedness will often say, ‘Everything is permissible except a sharp opinion.

Hypocrites get offended by the truth.

Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the...

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

I want to be part of the happiness team – let’s create the happiness team – from love, not greed, love of life & our planet, true & free.

Too many adults wish to ‘protect’ teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.

It was all changing. All of it. And it was horrible and it was lovely.

A Rule: Life without Islam is a naked tree,Birds without trees can never feel free.

Average intelligence loves blinders, which facilitate an even trot; but a brisker and livelier intelligence desires uncertainty, risk, a play of more deceptive and elusive forces…where one can preserve flight, pride, joke, confession, rapture, play,...

With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing.

Storytelling is an essential part of our cultural and human identity…when we become afraid of stories outside the mainstream, I believe we have lost a valuable part of our cultural inheritance and growth.

Worldly possessions didn’t matter much to him, but his freedom did. He could come and go as he pleased, with nothing more than the backpack underneath his seat. It was a simple existence for a...

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...

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

Let your eyes see what they see, not what others want you to see. Let your ears hear what they naturally hear, not what others want you to hear. Let your mouth speak your mind...

Anxiety, and the physical symptoms it causes, is merely fog along the path of independence and discovery.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Of all the religions in the world, perhaps the religion of liberty is the only faith capable of purity.

Considering he was neither priest nor scholar, the young man gave sensible, thoughtful replies — the more so, perhaps, for being untrained, for he had not learned what he should believe or should not believe....

Freedom is an expensive gift always worth fighting for. Even if it costs us!

Books of the sages of the ages reflect upon in stages; like honey their words on the tongue give due savour.”{Source: A Green Desert Father}

Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better...

A freedom given up is not so easily regained.

Lose your freedom, and become a slave by borrowing.

Your choices are your only freedom.

No man owns me. All man can do is practice the timeless, criminal art of threatening to separate my soul from her physical host.

Do you know, the only people I can have a conversation with are the Jews? At least when they quote scripture at you they are not merely repeating something some priest has babbled in their...

[M]an is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.

no people can be both ignorant and free.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

But, in making the sacrifices that the Government asks us to make, we are not protecting our freedom. We are giving away our freedom in exchange for a false sense of security.

The measure of man’s ability to extend the sphere of social possibility can only start with the values of democracy.

Those who have suffered in the hands of others,know what it is to be free.

The free-will of man cannot impune the sovereignty of God, and conversely the sovereignty of God would not impune the free-will of men”.

I do this real moron thing, and it’s called thinking. And apparently I’m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.

Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success.

Thought is free.

There is nothing more powerful and nothing more dangerously beautiful than a free mind.