Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [441-460] of 502 Speech quotesSpeech QuotesSpeech Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is the landmark of an authoritarian regime...~ Justice Potter Stewart [A] function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve it’s high purpose when it indices a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with things as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for understanding.~ Justice Potter Stewart The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation, no less that the right to speak out or the right to travel is, in truth, a “personal” right.~ Justice Potter Stewart Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.~ Justice Potter Stewart Do the people of this land…desire to preserve those [liberties] protected by the First Amendment… If so, let them withstand all beginnings of encroachment. For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanquished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch for a saving hand while yet there was time.~ George Sutherland Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.~ Jonathan Swift The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts a medium of expression commonly used for the preservation and communication of information and ideas, thus triggering First Amendment scrutiny. Illinois has criminalized the nonconsensual recording of most any oral communication, including recordings of public officials doing the public’s business in public and regardless of whether the recording is open or surreptitious. Defending the broad sweep of this statute, the State’s Attorney relies on the government’s interest in protecting conversational privacy, but that interest is not implicated when police officers are performing their duties in public places and engaging in public communications audible to persons who witness the events. Even under the more lenient intermediate standard of scrutiny applicable to content-neutral burdens on speech, this application of the statute very likely flunks. The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests; as applied to the facts alleged here, it likely violates the First Amendment’s free-speech and free-press guarantees.~ Judge Diane Schwerm Sykes Such being the happiness of the times, that you may think as you wish, and speak as you think. [Lat., Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet.]~ Cornelius Tacitus It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.~ Cornelius Tacitus A good argument diluted to avoid criticism is not nearly as good as the undiluted argument, because we best arrive at truth through a process of honest and vigorous debate. Arguments should not sneak around in disguise, as if dissent were somehow sinister… For it is bravery that is required to secure freedom.~ Justice Clarence Thomas A theory deeply etched in our law [is that] a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse the rights of free speech after they break the law rather than to throttle them and all others beforehand.~ Justice Clarence Thomas Political censorship is necessarily based on fear of what will happen if those whose work is censored get their way, or if they are effecting in persuading a large number of readers to share their point of view. The nature of political censorship at any given time depends on the censor’s answer to the simple question, “What are you afraid of?”~ Donald Thompson Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.~ Harry S. Truman 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.~ Mark Twain Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.~ Mark Twain A library is an arsenal of liberty.~ Unknown If a State refused to let religious groups use facilities open to others, then it would demonstrate not neutrality but hostility toward religion. The Establishment Clause does not license government to treat religion and those who teach or practice it … as subversive of American ideals.~ US Supreme Court Just as there is a very short distance between the U.S. and Cuba, there is a very short distance between a democracy and a dictatorship where the government gets to decide what to do, how to think, and how to live. And sometimes your freedom is not taken away at gunpoint, but instead it is done one piece of paper at a time, one seemingly meaningless rule at a time, one small silencing at a time. Never allow the government – or anyone else – to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do or not do.~ Armando Valladares The Second Amendment, like the First Amendment, is ... not mysterious. Nor is it equivocal. Least of all is it opaque. Rather, one may say, today it is simply unwelcome in any community that wants no one (save perhaps the police?) to keep or bear arms at all. But ... it is for them to seek repeal of this amendment (and so the repeal of its guarantee), in order to have their way. Or so the Constitution itself assuredly appears to require, if that is the way things are to be.~ William Van Alstyne Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print