Words matter. These are the best Free Speech Quotes from famous people such as David Ignatius, Claire Fox, Emmeline Pankhurst, Sarah Harrison, Larry Flynt, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The Founding Fathers’ instructions were clear: The right to free speech includes bad speech; it means tolerance of ideas that many find obnoxious.
Democrats need to value free speech and we should not be intimidated into giving an inch of it away.
Manchester is a city which has witnessed a great many stirring episodes, especially of a political character. Generally speaking, its citizens have been liberal in their sentiments, defenders of free speech and liberty of opinion.
Free speech and freedom of the press are under attack in the U.K. I cannot return to England, my country, because of my journalistic work with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and at WikiLeaks. There are things I feel I cannot even write.
You know, everybody believes in free speech until you start questioning them about it.
Free speech gives us the ability to react vigorously with effective arguments and expose the weakness and misdirection of the other side’s claims.
That said, the question remains: how to strike the balance between free speech and mutual respect in this mixed-up world, both blessed and cursed with instant communication? We should not fight fire with fire, threats with threats.
Free speech is never out of the news.
The idea that corporations have the same First Amendment protections of free speech as people is troubling. Corporations are not people. They don’t attend our schools, get married and have children. They don’t vote in our elections.
In terms of political contributions, the free speech rights of corporations I don’t think deserve the same protections as the free speech rights of real living, breathing, voting humans.
Protecting free speech is not only a matter of principle, it is also pragmatic.
The facts of the fossil record never justified denying poor people a healthy diet. The facts of the weather record do not justify denying poor people affordable energy. And no set of facts, whatever they may be, can justify denying scientists – or anyone else, for that matter – the right to free speech.
I fundamentally agree with the critical nature of Israeli democracy, which embraces the core notion of free speech.
Now is the time to draw a clean, clear, bright line and say if you are engaging in speech over the Internet you do not have to check with your lawyer or your accountant. You are a free American, and you have the opportunity to engage in free speech over the Internet.
Free speech is the cornerstone to every right we have.
The alt-right is working hard to cloak its desire to create chaos in the streets as free speech. They say they want to air their views, but it’s about provoking violent reactions. We all can easily see that this is not about free speech.
Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.
To some, incredibly, Russia has become a human rights leader. Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower, has succeeded in his asylum application in Russia, and White House spokesman Jay Carney appears flummoxed and wrong-footed as the mantle of free speech and liberty appears to pass from West to East.
There’s public health risks to doing large political gatherings, but in this country – and we do still live in America – we protect the right to free speech and we protect the right to political discourse and political events.
It isn’t only in the name of free speech that the views of an itchy polemicist should be tolerated – and I say itchy polemicist promoting thought, not itchy ideologue promoting violence – but because provocation is indispensable to the workings of a sound, creative culture.
In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.
I’ve skewered whites, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, straights, rednecks, addicts, the elderly, and my wife. As a standup comic, it is my job to make sure the majority of people laugh, and I believe that comedy is the last true form of free speech.
Flag-burning is plain wrong, and I’ll stand up for free speech – even speech I don’t like.
Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
When it comes to free speech and participation in the democratic process, our laws should reflect the goal of making it easier for more citizens to engage.
We need to understand that an open society and free speech and press… really are the best weapons against al Qaeda and extremism.
We are becoming a society where traditional values and free speech are being diminished and the religious are viewed as having a backward mentality.
It’s always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It’s much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent.
‘Free speech’ isn’t speech at all if it’s being used without listening, attention, or care.
Judges are either partial to the Constitution or they aren’t; they either believe that the document is perfect in its form and that rights like free speech don’t ebb in and out of style – or they believe that it’s an anachronistic document in a world that needs a malleable, living Constitution.
I support Richard Spencer’s right to say what he wants. He can be nasty about Jewish people, he has a right to free speech, but I don’t want to be a part of that.
Moderate people are able to be moderate and have free speech only because there are some people on the fringe.
Free speech is very important.
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
Rather than shutting down free speech, we need to broaden it, to make it possible for young people to say even the things we dislike so we can talk them down. And we need politicians to articulate a picture of the future that includes all of us. Not British values but shared human values.
The fact that we’re protected under that Constitution in exercising the right of free speech, it’s a wonderful thing. You’ve got to come from somewhere else to realize how valuable it is.
Any kind of restrictions put on free speech would have worse consequences than bullying.
You should protest about the views of people you disagree with over major moral issues, and argue them down, but you should not try to silence them, however repugnant you find them. That is the bitter pill free speech requires us to swallow.
If you actually believe in free speech and not simply the free distribution of other people’s intellectual property, you should let journalists, law firms, and investors exercise their rights to it alongside your own.
Hate speech can’t be a part of free speech.
And a democracy can’t exist without free speech and the right to assemble. And that’s what Americans tend to forget. And they’re born into a culture where they take all of their freedoms for granted.
None of us believes in an untrammelled right to free speech. We all agree there are always going to be lines that, for the purposes of law and order, cannot be crossed; or for the purposes of taste and decency, should not be crossed. We differ only on where those lines should be drawn.
Practicing free speech on an open platform is a perilous path for any public figure, and there are no get-out-of-jail free passes in the court of public opinion.
I’m as keen as the next person to preserve the right to free speech.
The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.
Free speech is one of the most important things to me, but I think it gets confusing when it comes to offense. Because for one, just because you have the right to say anything, it doesn’t mean you have to.
Free speech is one of the founding principles of our republic.
Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.
Protected free speech has boundaries, and one boundary is fraud.
These are all voluntary resources which help parents sort out the choices without infringing on the artists’ rights to free speech, which is something that we respect.
I realized very quickly that the main thing that the left was not in favor of was free speech – that there was an intolerance about different ideas and opinions.
This country is built on free speech.
You cannot prevent me from talking. I am exercising my right to free speech.
By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.
The right of free speech cannot be parceled out based on whether we want to hear what the speaker has to say or whether we agree with those views. It means, quite often, tolerating the expression of views that we find distasteful, perhaps even repugnant.
