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Censorship and freedom of speech are hot button issues these days. It used to be that censors didn’t have to spend very much effort presenting their argument against free speech. “Say that again and I’ll boil you alive,” although tactless, is effective. But now that people can express their thoughts anonymously – and because they have been corrupted by concepts such as “rights” and “the First Amendment”—speech that threatens the established authorities is becoming increasingly difficult to suppress.
So how do you stop free speech? It’s not so difficult once you get creative. The most important thing an elite must do is convince people that any idea they don’t like is hate speech. Bonus points if they believe speech can equate to violence. Once the hoi polloi begin censoring themselves, you’ll have far more time to devote to what really matters in life: acquiring wealth and power.
It will also help a great deal if the people you rule over are no longer capable of critical thinking. Tackle this quandary in three easy steps. First, portray intellectualism in a negative light in the media. Second, produce endless amounts of mind-numbing media products. (The less stimulating the better.) Third, redesign the education system so it no longer teaches English or mathematics. Before long people won’t even have the capacity to perceive what is disagreeable about the status quo you have cultivated and profit from.
Just remember: As enthusiastically as you would like to persecute every last dissident who shares quotes about freedom of speech online, you’ve got to let a few of them get away with it. It’s easier to rile up your dogs on command when a shadowy threat is still at large somewhere.
Quotes About Free Speech and Censorship
Noam Chomsky
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
Mark Twain
“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”
Lord Acton
“Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice.”
Voltaire
“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
– Voltaire
P.D. James
“I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.”
Aryeh Neier
“Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.”
Peter McGlouchlin
“Political correctness is a sinister device constructed by the left to cause the negative outcomes of left-wing ideology to never be subject to criticism.”
– Peter McGlouchlin, Easy Meat: Inside the British Grooming Gang Scandal
Sam Harris
“We (as a society) have to be committed to defending free speech however impolitic, or unpopular, or even wrong because defending that is the only barrier to violence. That’s because the only way we can influence one another short of physical violence is thru speech, thru communicating ideas. The moment you say certain ideas can’t be communicated you create a circumstance where people have no alternative but to go hands on you.”
– Sam Harris, Making Sense with Sam Harris, #67 – Meaning and Chaos
Ann Althouse
“Why does the left hate free speech? Because they don’t know how to talk about the substantive merits when they are challenged. Having submerged themselves in disciplining each other by denouncing any heretics in their midst, they find themselves overwhelmed and outnumbered in America, where there is vibrant debate about all sorts of things they don’t know how to begin to talk about. They resort to stomping their feet and shouting ‘shut up’… when they aren’t prissily imploring everyone to be ‘civil.’”
Ray Bradbury
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”
Winston Churchill
“Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”
William F. Buckley
“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
Hugo Black
“Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
– Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black
Theodore Roosevelt
“It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
George Orwell
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.”
Johan Norberg
“The right to speak freely does not include the right to be taken seriously. And it certainly doesn’t include the obligation that others must supply you with a platform.”
John Stossel
Stossel: “If somebody wants to be called Ze or Zir, why not?”
Peterson: “I don’t care what people want to be called, that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean I should be compelled by law to call them that. The government has absolutely no business whatsoever ever governing the content of your voluntary speech.”
Stossel: “But if I personally said I’d like you to call me Ze or Zen?”
Peterson: “We could have a conversation about that. Just like I would if you asked me to use a nickname for example. But there’s a big difference between privately negotiated modes of address. And legislatively demanded compelled speech.”
– John Stossel interviewing Jordan Peterson
Best Freedom of Speech Quotes
– Benjamin Franklin
“In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech; a thing terrible to publick traytors.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”
– George Washington
“A popular government, without popular information, or the mean of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
– James Madison
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
– Harry S. Truman
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
– Thomas Paine
“The communists and the Nazis are merely two variants of the same evil notion: collectivism. But both should be free to speak – evil ideas are dangerous only by default of men advocating better ideas.”
– Ayn Rand
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
– Noam Chomsky
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum…”
– Noam Chomsky
“The only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression, because if that goes, then so do all other claims of right as well.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.”
– Christopher Hitchens
– Peter Hitchens
“Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.”
– St. Catherine of Siena
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
– George Orwell
“If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”
– George Orwell
“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”
– Oscar Wilde
“Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.”
– Salman Rushdie
“This is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.”
– Euripides
“It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.”
– Tacitus, Histories of Tacitus
“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.”
– Louis Brandeis
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
– Robert H. Jackson
“Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.”
– Robert H. Jackson
“Every legislative limitation upon utterance, however valid, may in a particular case serve as an inroad upon the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects.”
– Stanley F. Reed
“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
– William J. Brennan, Jr.
“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime…”
– Potter Stewart
“First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”
– Anthony M. Kennedy
“Political correctness is tyranny; just tyranny with manners.”
– Charlton Heston
“Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.”
– Aryeh Neier
“Liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.”
– Lenny Bruce
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.”
– Philip K. Dick
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”
– Ray Bradbury
“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.”
– Henry A. Wallace
“To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.”
– Aung San Suu Kyi
“Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.”
– Neil Gaiman
I hope you enjoyed our freedom of speech quotes! But if you didn’t, keep your big mouth shut.