Trego's Mountain Ear

“If defending free speech doesn’t get you into trouble, then you are not in fact defending free speech. The only speech worth defending is unpopular and very often it comes out of the mouths of people nobody likes.”

Peter Hitchens

“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”

Oscar Wilde

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

Benjamin Franklin

“In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.”

Jordan Peterson

“If you’re not going to use your free speech to criticize your own government, then what the hell is the point of having it?”

Michel Templet

“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

“Ultimately, saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”

Edward Snowden

“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

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”

William O. Douglas

“The claim “hate speech is not free speech” implies “free” is a type of speech, as opposed to how speech is treated in a free society.”

Michael Malice

“You can’t pick and choose which types of freedom you want to defend. You must defend all of it or be against all of it.”

Scott Howard Phillips

“To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas – even if they are sincerely held beliefs – is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.

It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness – and the other represents oppression.”

Rowen Atkinson

“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.” 

Thomas Jefferson

“There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” 

Idi Amin

“The majority of people are not fully committed to either the right or the left. Nor either to censorship or to absolute freedom of speech. People are too caught up in the daily struggle for survival to pour a lot of energy into ideology.” 

Wendy McElroy

“Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart.” 

Voltaire