Free Speech Quotes - Page 22

• I believe in markets doing what they do well, which is to develop technology, and letting citizens do what they ideally do well, which is to set policy.

  Esther Dyson

  Believe, Technology, Citizens

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

  Lady Starlight

  Bullying, Speech, Kind

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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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• 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 underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing power, and more sophisticated techniques used by establishment mass media to falsify, misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a priori ridiculous, or simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books, discoveries that they consider prejudicial to establishment interest.

  William S. Burroughs

  Book, Discovery, Media

  William S. Burroughs (1979). “Ah Pook is here, and other texts”, Calder Publications Limited

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• In 1991, the latest year figures are available, most Americans, across all age groups, disapproved when asked the question: 'Everything considered, would you say that you approve or disapprove of wiretapping?' Some 67% of all 18-20 year olds gave the thumbs down, as did 68% of the Gen-X crowd...Boomers disapproved of wiretapping almost 3-to-1 while 67% of those 50 and over disapproved.

  Brock N. Meeks

  Years, Thumbs Down, Age

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• Will his work survive? Alas, I worry that it will not. As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself. Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land.

  Pat Conroy

  Art, Media, Land

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• New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises 'Why then are you not taking part in them?

  H. G. Wells

  Science, Internet, Arise

  H. G. Wells (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells”, p.7624, Delphi Classics

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• Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Democracies Have, Government, Democracy

  Parliament of Whores (1991)

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• My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Profound, Effort, Speech

  H.L. Mencken (2011). “My Life as Author and Editor”, p.29, Vintage

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• I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.

  Peggy Noonan

  Dream, Needs, Speech

  Peggy Noonan (2008). “Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now”, Harper

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• I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs -including my own- on nonbelievers.

  Barack Obama

  Religious, Believe, Government

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• Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.

  Bertrand Russell

  Happiness, Depressing, Hate

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• If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Believe, Verbs, Firsts

  Philosophical Investigations (1953) pt. 2, sec. 10

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• The first amendment protects free speech, but if you don't have freedom of thought, do you really have freedom of speech?

  Rob Kampia

  Freedom Of Speech, Firsts, First Amendment

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• Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life.

  Germaine Greer

  Life, Happiness, Denial

  Germaine Greer (1971). “The female eunuch”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• He also said that if anyone did anything to mess up the rest of the testing, he was going to call 911 personally. Yeah, like that wouldn't make it into the nightly news again: WHEELCHAIR-BOUND CANCER PATIENT ARRESTED FOR FREE SPEECH.

  Jordan Sonnenblick

  Cancer, News, Speech

  Jordan Sonnenblick (2012). “After Ever After”, p.102, Scholastic Inc.

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• Ares always reemerges from the chaos. It will never go away. Athenian civilization defends itself from the forces of Ares with metis, or technology. Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists' uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn't work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish.

  Neal Stephenson

  Art, Technology, Civilization

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• I prefer a little free speech to no free speech at all; but how many have free speech or the chance or the mind for it; and is not free speech here as elsewhere clamped down on in ratio of its freedom and danger?

  James Agee

  Mind, Speech, Littles

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• We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it.

  Yishan Wong

  Mean, Speech, Bans

  "Reddit Defines What Free Speech Means on Reddit" by Rebecca Greenfield, www.theatlantic.com. October 17, 2012.

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• You see these dictators up on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They're afraid of words and thought. ... They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words. ... A state of society where men may not speak their mind - where children denounce their parents to the police - where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endure if it is continually in contact with the healthy outside world.

  Winston Churchill

  Children, Men, Long

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• Twitter is a form of free speech, and I'm all for that. But if Cee Lo Green, a maverick of sorts, can't get on Twitter and say something outlandish or outrageous, then what is the whole point of Twitter at all?

  Cee Lo Green

  Speech, Green, Form

  "Cee Lo Green Is Fking Outrageous". Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.esquire.com. February 5, 2012.

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• Free speech isn't dead in Germany and Italy, merely the speakers.

  Bob Hope

  Funny, Humorous, Italian

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• Free speech is meaningless unless it tolerates the speech that we hate.

  Henry Hyde

  Hate, Liberty, Speech

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