Free Speech Quotes - Page 20

• Life is a process which may be abstracted from other media.

  John von Neumann

  Media, May, Life Is

  23 Copy quote

• Taxpayers have spent more than $200 billion in the last decade on computer systems that are antiquated, incompatible, and not doing the job.

  William Cohen

  Jobs, Lasts, Computer

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• I doubt that Congress would pass on the opportunity to make sure that our children were safe from terrorists.

  Louis J. Freeh

  Children, Opportunity, Doubt

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• It seems to me the book has not just aesthetic values - the charming little clothy box of the thing, the smell of the glue, even the print, which has its own beauty. But there's something about the sensation of ink on paper that is in some sense a thing, a phenomenon rather than an epiphenomenon. I can't break the association of electric trash with the computer screen. Words on the screen give the sense of being just another passing electronic wriggle.

  John Updike

  Book, Smell, Giving

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• I've been asked to explain why I don't worry much about the topics of privacy threat...One reason is that these scenarios seem to assume that there will be large, monolithic bureaucracies...that are capable of harnessing computers for one-way surveillance of an unsuspecting populace. I've come to feel that computation just doesn't work that way. Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire.

  Bruce Sterling

  Fire, Organization, Worry

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• The part that frightens the hell out of me is the goverment deciding where technology goes.

  Patrick Leahy

  Technology, Internet, Hell

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• Everybody has a different Internet.

  Bruce Sterling

  Different, Internet

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• We live in a country that talks about being the home of the brave and the land of the free, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Country, Father, Home

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• Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war... Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  War, Government, Effort

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• My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.

  Ma Jian

  Believe, Government, Ideas

  "Exiled author Ma Jian banned from visiting China" by Tania Branigan, www.theguardian.com. July 29, 2011.

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• Manchester is a city which has witnessed a great many stirring episodes, especially of a political character. Generally speaking, its citizens have been liberal in their sentiments, defenders of free speech and liberty of opinion.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Character, Cities, Political

  Emmeline Pankhurst (2015). “My Own Story: Top Biography”, p.4, 谷月社

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• The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it is very much better at all costs to hear everyone's account of it, is a theory which has been justified on the whole by experiment, but which remains a very daring and even a very surprising theory. It is really one of the great discoveries of the modern time.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Equality, Discovery, Cost

  "Robert Browning". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1903.

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• Americans have an extraordinary love-hate relationship with the rich culture they've created. They buy, watch and read it even as they ban, block and condemn it.

  Jon Katz

  Hate, Block, America

  Jon Katz (1997). “Virtuous Reality: How America Surrendered Discussion of Moral Values to Opportunists, Nitwits, and Blockheads Like William Bennett”, Random House Incorporated

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• Fashion is free speech, and one of the privileges, if not always one of the pleasures, of a free world

  Alison Lurie

  Fashion, Inspiration, World

  1981 The Language of Clothes.

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• Any kind of restrictions put on free speech would have worse consequences than bullying.

  Lady Starlight

  Bullying, Speech, Kind

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• While we bemoan the decline of literacy, computers discount words in favor of pictures and pictures in favor of video. While we fret about the decreasing cogency of public debate, computers dismiss linear argument and promote fast, shallow romps across the information landscape. While we worry about basic skills, we allow into the classroom software that will do a student's arithmetic or correct his spelling.

  David Gelernter

  Skills, Worry, Video

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• Society has recognized over time that certain kinds of scientific inquiry can endanger society as a whole and has applied either directly, or through scientific/ethical constraints, restrictions on the kind and amount of research that can be done in those areas.

  Bobby Ray Inman

  Inquiry, Done, Research

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• There is a very real and critical danger that unrestrained public discussion of cryptologic matters will seriously damage the ability of this government to conduct signals intelligence and the ability of this government to carry out its mission of protecting national security information from hostile exploitation.

  Bobby Ray Inman

  Real, Government, Information

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• Behind all the hype shaping the electronic highway are corporate interests. These huge companies are doing the most natural thing in the world to them; following their own corporate interest.

  Herbert Schiller

  Hype, World, Internet

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• The FBI wanted us to introduce the 1994 Digital Telephony bill today and I said absolutely not. They have to understand they have a Vermonter as the Chairman Of the Technology and Law committee and that we Vermonters respect our privacy.

  Patrick Leahy

  Technology, Law, Bills

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• There are no bad haircuts in cyberspace.

  Dave Barry

  Cyberspace, Internet, Bad Haircuts

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• In Turkey it was always 1952, in Malaysia 1937; Afghanistan was 1910 and Bolivia 1949. It is 20 years ago in the Soviet Union, 10 in Norway, five in France. It is always last year in Australia and next week in Japan.

  Paul Theroux

  Japan, Next Week, Years

  Paul Theroux (2012). “The Lower River”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Our fear of technology is really a fear of empowerment. We now have the ability to design the reality we live in, and we have to step up to the occasion.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Technology, Reality, Design

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• There happened in the Middle Ages what has happened so often since then. Those who were the beneficiaries of the established order were bent on defending it, not so much, perhaps, because it guaranteed their interests, as because it seemed to them indispensable to the preservation of society.

  Henri Pirenne

  Order, Age, Internet

  Henri Pirenne (1956). “Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade”, p.169, Princeton University Press

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• The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Children, Book, Reading

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