A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything.
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.
We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.
We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, That man is a Red, that man is a Communist. You never heard a real American talk in that manner.
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think.
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
The freedom of the press works in such a way that there is not much freedom from it.
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward -- or go back. He who now talks about the freedom of the press goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.
At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.
Marks on paper are free -- free speech -- press -- pictures all go together I suppose.
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
— Voltaire
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.