Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [341-360] of 502 Speech quotesSpeech QuotesSpeech Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them; they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.~ John Milton Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.~ John Milton Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.~ James Monroe You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.~ John Viscount Morley Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.~ Jim Morrison Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this.~ Toni Morrison We owe to democracy, at least in part, the regime of discussion with which we live; we owe it to the principal modern liberties: those of thought, press and association. And the regime of free discussion is the only one which permits the ruling class to renew itself… which eliminates that class quasi-automatically when it no longer corresponds to the interests of the country.~ Gaetano Mosca If you think there is freedom of the press in the United States, I tell you there is no freedom of the press... They come out with the cheap shot. The press should be ashamed of itself. They should come to both sides of the issue and hear both sides and let the American people make up their minds.~ Bill Moyers Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion all have a double aspect – freedom of thought and freedom of action.~ Frank Murphy Democracy is talking itself to death. The people do not know what they want; they do not know what is the best for them. There is too much foolishness, too much lost motion. I have stopped the talk and the nonsense. I am a man of action. Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.~ Benito Mussolini People are tired of liberty. They have had a surfeit of it. Liberty is no longer a chaste and austere virgin…. Today’s youth are moved by other slogans…Order, Hierarchy, Discipline.~ Benito Mussolini In the most civilized and progressive countries freedom of discussion is recognized as a fundamental principle.~ C. E. M. Joad The artist and the censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.~ George Jean Nathan There are…certain freedoms that are like circuses. Their very existence, so long as they are individual and enjoyed chiefly individually as by spectators, diverts men’s mind from the loss of other, more fundamental, social and economic and political rights.~ Robert Nisbet Very commonly in ages when civil rights of one kind are in evidence – those pertaining to freedom of speech and thought in, say, theater, press, and forum, with obscenity and libel laws correspondingly loosened – very real constrictions of individual liberty take place in other, more vital areas: political organization, voluntary association, property, and the right to hold jobs, for example.~ Robert Nisbet The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with.~ Eleanor Holmes Norton Most of us tend to think of “speech” and “press” in the relatively traditional modes of the spoken and printed word… We should bear in mind that – whatever the Framers of the Bill of Rights may have expected – the First Amendment has adapted over the years to telephones, motion pictures, radio and television broadcasting, fax, cable, and is now just beginning to take measure of digital communication.~ Robert M. O'Neil Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and will always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.~ Eugene O'Neill Under the Equal Protection clause, not to mention the First Amendment itself, government may not grant the use of a forum to people whose views it finds acceptable, but deny use to those wishing to express less favored or more controversial views.~ Supreme Court Of The United States As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.~ J. Robert Oppenheimer Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print