Today it is becoming harder to speak out, with the inception of the Patriot Act, the president has legislated free speech to be a crime.
Free speech is life itself.
Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.
All the big powers... they've silenced me. So much for free speech and choice on this fundamental human right.
Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.
Now is the time to draw a clean, clear, bright line and say if you are engaging in speech over the Internet you do not have to check with your lawyer or your accountant. You are a free American, and you have the opportunity to engage in free speech over the Internet.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
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.
Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.
That said, the question remains: how to strike the balance between free speech and mutual respect in this mixed-up world, both blessed and cursed with instant communication? We should not fight fire with fire, threats with threats.
We shouldn't have free speech.
Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.
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 of them.
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly may not be submitted to vote; they depend on no elections.
I don't think we should be deprived of the privilege of free speech
Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open and that...may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.
It is easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we agree.
Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.
The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed.
Without Freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom;and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.
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.
If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
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