198 Quotes About Free-speech

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]

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.

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] mostly BS.

In a conflict of opinion between Einstein and a fool, one wishes for Einstein to prevail. And in a conflict between Einstein and thousand fools or a million, one wishes all the more for Einstein to prevail.

It is possible to imagine a world where tech serves us, and not the other way around, where the Big Tech monopolies are monopolies no longer, where our property in our personal data is protected, where our children are safe online, where our speech is free.

A very dangerous principle is now being established as a social right: Thou shalt not hurt others with words.

Impelled by the notions that science is oppression and criticism is violence, the central regulation of debate and inquiry is returning to respectability—this time in a humanitarian disguise.

Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

There will always be those whose instinct inclines towards submission to authority, who are happy to shift beliefs in accordance with the fashion or decrees from above. Orwell called this the 'gramophone mind', content to play the record of the moment whether or not one is in agreement