(125 quotes found)
“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.”
Winston Churchill
“The Framers [of the Constitution] knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.”
Hugo Black
“Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.”
Salman Rushdie
“It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.”
Herbert Hoover
“There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans ... and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“I don't know why people think that somehow the First Amendment applies to network television. It doesn't. It's like the way free speech doesn't apply at work. You can't just walk into your boss' office and say 'you're a fuckface and I'm gonna go back to work now.' No, you're not.”
Jon Stewart
“Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted”
Henry Louis Mencken
“Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.”
Abbie Hoffman
“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.”
Louis D. Brandeis
“If Thomas Jefferson had heard us, he probably would have said, 'We shouldn't have free speech.'”
Robin Quivers
