Free Speech Quotes

“Being offended is an emotional state, not a substantive argument; we cannot afford to give it the power to stifle debate.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

“There are two ways to choke off free expression. We've already discussed one of them: clamp down on free speech and declare some topics off-limits. That strategy is straightforward enough. The other, more insidious way to limit free expression is to try to change the very language people use.”
― Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces

“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”
― Andrew Doyle, Free Speech And Why It Matters

“You win a debate with a better argument, not by force.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, Listen to Your Conscience: That's Why You Have One

“It struck me that there is a reason James Madison put freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the very first amendment. If we can't speak out, if we cannot challenge those in power, there is no guaranteeing the rights that follow.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“Most of my opinions are not as informed and well rounded as I would like. I have to be humble enough to accept that I don’t know enough. If my goal is to understand something true, then being challenged is a good thing. We need to be challenged occasionally and to get out of the echo chamber that is your own philosophical group or your own confirmation biased mind. The alternative is to only be able to hear one narrative and for those who oppose that narrative to be silenced, or to have uncivil debate by two polar opposite opinions. Truth is usually found to be hidden in a field of nuance and, as Albert Maysles said, “Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance.”
― Eric Overby, Legacy

“Humans don't really like freedom of speech," Lukianoff told them, "they like to say they like it. And they definitely like their won freedom of speech. They don't necessarily like your freedom of speech that much”
― Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces

“...those in power often invoke civility to punish speech they dislike, but overlook the equally acid-tongued statements that are in agreement with their own assumptions.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

“Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image, but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“No one individual is immune to the criticism of others and none can claim to be above intellectual reproach. No one is omniscient or infallible, so we are all forced to defend our arguments with logic, evidence, and persuasion.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

“Freedom of expression is a basic expression of freedom.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The majority does not need a special amendment. The only reason you have a First Amendment is to protect the rights of the minorities, of people who aren't the majority. People who aren't in power.”
― Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces

“If you want to have everybody agreeing with you, join a club or program or church that agrees with you.”
― Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces

“As colleges and universities became dominated by the Left, tolerance and diversity fell by the wayside. The rising hostility toward liberal values like free speech has made entire college campuses unsafe places for people who align with the Right.”
― Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces

“De câte ori se întreabă omul modern, o dată cu dreptul la liberă exprimare, ce condiții trebuie totuși să respecte, așa încât minunăția de expresie liberă pe care și-o permite să nu fie, la rândul ei, o încălcare a altor drepturi ale altor oameni?”
― Andrei Cristian, Epoca îndreptățirii

“Blasphemy laws in Islamic countries force people there to stay quiet. If we also choose to be quite because of self-imposed blasphemy laws, who will be left to speak? It is our responsibility and our duty and our privilege to speak our minds. People have died so that you and I can have the right to free speech. what a dishonour to their memory if we squander this gift they have given us.”
― Yasmine Mohammed

“Free speech is a fundamental foundation of a free and fair democracy. But let’s be honest and have the guts to unpick who gets to speak, where, and why. The real test of this country’s perimeters of freedom of speech will be found if or when a person can freely discuss racism without being subject to intellectually dishonest attempts to undermine their arguments. If free speech, as so many insist, includes being prepared to hear opinions that you don’t like, then let’s open up the parameters of what we consider acceptable debate. I don’t mean new versions of old bigotry. I mean, that if we have to listen to this kind of bigotry, then let us have the equal and opposite viewpoint. If Katie Hopkins, with help from the Sun newspaper, publishes a column describing desperate refugees trying to travel to Britain as cockroaches, then we need a cultural commentator that advocates for true compassion and total open borders. Not the kind of wishy-washy liberalism that harps on about the cultural and economic contributions of migrants to this country as though they are resources to be sucked dry, but someone who speaks in favour of migrants and open borders with the same force of will with which Hopkins despises them.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“In other words, they were unwilling to tolerate conservative speech, which they were intolerant of conservative speech.”
― Mike Adams, Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" on Campus

“If there's a violent mob on campus, it isn't Ben Shapiro's fault - he's just someone coming to campus to talk about ideas. Mob violence is the mob's fault”
― Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces

“But the combination of modern hyper-parenting and left-leaning professors and administrators has allowed students to remake universities into large-scale editions of the island in Lord Of The Flies.”
― Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces

“Like Whitney Houston, we believe the children are the future. But adults are in charge of the present, and we should start acting like it.”
― Dennis Prager, No Safe Spaces

“Blasphemy laws in Islamic countries force people there to stay quiet. If we also choose to be quiet because of self-imposed blasphemy laws, who will be left to speak? It is our responsibility and our duty and our privilege to speak our minds. People have died so that you and I can have the right to free speech. what a dishonour to their memory if we squander this gift they have given us.”
― Yasmine Mohammed

“The profession of journalism is an important one and considered by many to be a mandatory component of a free society. Will you get access to the brightest minds and greatest reporters for free? Perhaps, but if we hope to continue to see their best work, society needs to support them properly. Be a paid subscriber.”
― Christopher Manske, The Prepared Investor: How to Prevent the Next Crisis from Affecting Your Financial Independence

“Online debates become personal, emotional, and irresolvable almost as soon as they begin.”
― Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters

“Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.”
― James C. Humes, The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill

“The United States went from the undisputed leader in the "Idea Economy" to a censored and barren wasteland of "wokeness" in one generation.”
― A.E. Samaan

“La realtà è diversa, ma sgradita, e dunque poco raccontata.”
― Noam Chomsky, Dis-educazione

“Il continuo bombardamento di materiale selezionato ad hoc, praticamente privo di voci critiche o di passaggi analitici, instilla solidamente nei lettori i presupposti che ne stanno alla base, allineando la percezione del pubblico alla giusta dottrina più efficacemente di quanto potrebbe fare un ministero della Verità. Nel frattempo i media possono sostenere che stanno solo facendo il loro mestiere onestamente: il che è vero, anche se non proprio nel senso che intendono loro.”
― Noam Chomsky, Dis-educazione

“Se sei il portavoce intellettuale del sistema dottrinale, puoi facilmente rigettare i fatti storici scomodi semplicemente etichettandoli come “bugie”, nella certezza che il sistema dottrinale non solo ti proteggerà, ma ti ricompenserà.[...]Se stai seguendo la linea del partito non devi documentare niente; puoi dire tutto quel che ti pare... È uno dei privilegi cui hai diritto in cambio dell’obbedienza. Se invece sei critico nei confronti dell’opinione generalmente accettata, devi documentare ogni frase.”
― Noam Chomsky, Dis-educazione

“Sixth, fundamentalism, properly understood, is not about religion. It is about the inability to seriously entertain the possibility that one might be wrong. In individuals such fundamentalism is natural and, within reason, desirable. But when it becomes the foundation for an intellectual system, it is inherently a threat to freedom of thought.”
― jonathan rauch, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought