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Talk:Freedom of speech/Archive 1

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  • Freedom isn’t free!
    • Slogan which dates back at least to 1947.
  • It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
  • We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
  • "Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
    He laughed. "That's against the law!"
    "Oh. Of course."
  • Fuck you very much the FCC
    For proving that free speech just isn't free
    Clear Channel's a dear channel, so Howard Stern must go
    Attorney General Ashcroft doesn't like strong words and so
    He's charging twice as much as all the drugs for Rush Limbo
    so Fuck you all so very much.
General
  • "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing as S. G. Tallentyre in 1906 (commonly attributed to Voltaire, of whom Hall wrote a biography).
  • "...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." John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
  • "Aren't people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have, but demand those they don't have; they have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech." Søren Kierkegaard, Diapsalmata, Either/Or (1843).
In support of free speech
  • If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
  • I have fought censorship all of my adult life. To me, the most precious of all rights in this marvelous country called the United States of America is the freedom to think, write and say whatever is on your mind... That freedom also extends to thoughts that are stupid, ignorant or incendiary. No one needs a First Amendment to write about how cute newborn babies are or to publish a recipe for strawberry shortcake. Nobody needs a First Amendment for innocuous or popular points of view. That's point one. Point two is that the majority-you and I-must always protect the right of a minority-even a minority of one-to express the most outrageous and offensive ideas. Only then is total freedom of expression guaranteed.
  • The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.
    • Unknown.
In support of specific limits
  • "...When compared with the suppression of anarchy every other question sinks into insignificance. The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, and his is a deeper degree of criminality than any other. No immigrant is allowed to come to our shores if he is an anarchist; and no paper published here or abroad should be permitted circulation in this country if it propagates anarchist opinions." Theodore Roosevelt, 1908
  • "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1919

Unsourced, moved from article to talk page. Cirt (talk) 06:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

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