quotations about freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together: And it is the terror of traitors and oppressors, and a barrier against them.
JOHN TRENCHARD & THOMAS GORDON
Cato's Letters
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
In American democracy, this free speech plays two vital roles. The first is well recognized. It is to shape public opinion and to influence elections that, in turn, determine the social climate and steer government. We cherish "the marketplace of ideas" because (we assume) it allows us, through give and take, to arrive at better ideas and to grope our way toward consensus on hard issues. Free speech's second function is less understood. It buttresses the political system's legitimacy. It helps losers, in the struggle for public opinion and electoral success, to accept their fates. It helps keep them loyal to the system, even though it has disappointed them. They will accept the outcomes, because they believe they've had a fair opportunity to express and advance their views. There's always the next election.
ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
"In politics, money is speech", Washington Post, April 6, 2014
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
ADLAI STEVENSON
speech to the state committee of the Liberal party, New York City, August 28, 1952
Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.
ROBERT H. JACKSON
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943
The big American freedom of speech is teaching me so much. Mainly, that freedom of speech is yet another term perverted to its core.
VIRAG GULYAS
"When Art Galleries Legitimize Terrorism", Israellycool, June 23, 2019
It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.
TACITUS
Histories of Tacitus
The censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression.
WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS
Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 1966
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
LOUIS BRANDEIS
Whitney v. California, 1927
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.
MARK TWAIN
Following the Equator
We have to uphold a free press and freedom of speech -- because, in the end, lies and misinformation are no match for the truth.
BARACK OBAMA
remarks by President Obama to the people of Estonia, September 3, 2014
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
JOHN MILTON
Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicens'd Printing, to the Parliament of England, November 23, 1644
Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control. Where ever the cause of liberty is making its way, one of its highest accomplishments is the guarantee of the freedom of the press.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
speech, Jan. 17, 1925
Should freedom of speech include the freedom to tell lies? Who decides what is true and what is a lie? Should the young and impressionable be exposed to propaganda deliberately designed to make them hate others? If we deny the deniers the right to spread their venom, are we then putting our own right to free speech at risk? At which point does hate speech so directly provoke violence that it should be banned?
TED GOTTFRIED
Deniers of the Holocaust
Free speech is prior to diversity, as the philosophers say. It is a necessary condition of diversity, and probably diversity's greatest guarantor.
ANDREW FERGUSON
"Hurrah for the First Amendment, but...", The Weekly Standard, March 23, 2018
The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.
CLARENCE DARROW
address to the court, People v. Lloyd, 1920