Free Expression Quotes

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  What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

  Salman Rushdie

  Honesty, Integrity, Expression

  Salman Rushdie (1990). “In good faith”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Freedom, Hate, Attachment

  United States v. Schwimmer (dissenting opinion) (1929)

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• 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 D. Brandeis

  Education, Time, Evil

  Whitney v. California (concurring opinion) (1927) See OliverWendell Holmes, Jr. 29

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• I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Inspirational, Graduation, Dream

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• If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Printed Books, Printed Word, Offending

  Benjamin Franklin (1945). “Autobiographical writings”

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• Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts." This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where, in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win.

  William O. Douglas

  Winning, Expression, Community

  "Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 24, 1957.

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• The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

  John Stuart Mill

  Opportunity, Errors, Race

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.163, Hackett Publishing

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  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.

  Winston Churchill

  Business, Humorous, Hypocrite

  Winston Churchill (1952). “War Speeches: From September 11, 1943 to August 16, 1945”

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• Freedom demands that we struggle for an extension of both equality and free expression, not regard one as inimical to the other.

  Kenan Malik

  Struggle, Expression, Demand

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• It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.

  William O. Douglas

  Attitude, Fate, Expression

  "The One Un-American Act". William O. Douglas' speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award, December 3, 1952.

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• The censor's sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.

  Earl Warren

  Heart, Expression, Censorship

  Dissent in Times Film Corp. v. City of Chicago 365 U.S. 43, 1961.

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• Nowadays the big Hollywood studios only make about three movies a year, and they cost about $200 million each. There's no room for error in that, and not a lot of room, I would think, for free expression.

  Robbie Coltraine

  Thinking, Errors, Expression

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• The free expression of opinion, as experience has taught us, is the safety-valve of passion. The noise of the rushing steam, when it escapes, alarms the timid; but it is the sign that we are safe. The concession of reasonable privilege anticipates the growth of furious-appetite.

  Herbert Gladstone, 1st Viscount Gladstone

  Passion, Expression, Taught Us

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• I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.

  Ai Weiwei

  Expression, Silence, I Can

  "You're There but You're Not Existing". Interview with Jian Ghomeshi, CBC Radio Canada, March 22, 2012.

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• A society that could heal the dismembered world would recognize the inherent value of each person and of the plant, animal and elemental life that makes up the earth's living body; it would offer real protection, encourage free expression, and reestablish an ecological balance to be biologically and economically sustainable. Its underlying metaphor would be mystery, the sense of wonder at all that is beyond us and around us, at the forces that sustain our lives and the intricate complexity and beauty of their dance.

  Starhawk

  Real, Animal, Expression

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• Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.

  Esther Perel

  Loyalty, Expression, Trouble

  Twitter post from Sep 22, 2014

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• American style is about confidence, independence, diversity and free expression.

  Tommy Hilfiger

  Confidence, Fashion, Freedom

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• Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a childs soul.”• “Play is the highest level of child development . . . It gives . . . joy, freedom, contentment, inner and outer rest, peace with the world . . . The plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all later life.”• “Children are like tiny flowers; they are varied and need care, but each is beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers.

  Friedrich Frobel

  Beautiful, Children, Flower

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• The whole point of free expression is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

  Garry Wills

  Expression, Ideas, Criticism

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• At some point free expression absolutism becomes childish and unserious.

  Garry Trudeau

  Expression, Absolutism

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• Michael Moore and I actually have a lot in common. We both appreciate living in a country where there's free expression. But Michael, if you ever show up at my front door with a camera, I'll kill you. I mean it.

  Clint Eastwood

  Country, Mean, Doors

  "Moore Is In The Line Of Clint's Ire". www.nydailynews.com. January 13, 2005.

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• The ideas of individual supremacy and the right of free expression, when carried to excess, have not worked. They have made it difficult to keep America society cohesive. Asia can see it is not working.. In America itself, there is widespread crime and violence, old people feel forgotten, families are falling apart. And the media attacks the integrity and character of your leaders with impunity, drags down all those in authority and blames everyone but itself.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Integrity, Fall, Character

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• In the West, there's a myth that freedom means free expression-that to follow all desires wherever they take one is true freedom. In fact, as one serves the mind, one sees that following desires, attractions, and repulsions is not at all freedom, but is a kind of bondage. A mind filled with desires and grasping inevitably entails great suffering. Freedom is not to be gained through the ability to perform certain external actions. True freedom is an inward state of being. Once it is attained, no situation in the world can bind one or limit one's freedom.

  Jack Kornfield

  Mean, Expression, Mind

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• [Christian rebellion] arises from the doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression and longs to liberate them… it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions or imprisons people for their views alone.

  John Stott

  Christian, Rights, Views

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• The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beauty, Country, Art

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1653, Delphi Classics

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