Free speech

“ Having found it I had a right to advocate it, and I did. The constitution of the United States, when it says: "The right of free speech shall not be abridged," gives every man the right to speak his thoughts. ”

“ Free speech is stronger than constitutions or dynasties. You might as well put your hands over the crater of a burning volcano, and seek thus to extinguish its flames, as to attempt to stop discussion by such an amendment of the Constitution. Stop discussion of the great questions affecting the policy, strength, and prosperity of the Government! ”

“ In my firm belief in the constitution which the founders of this republic bequeathed to this people and which remains unaltered, I have exercised the right of free speech, free press, free thought and free assemblage, as guaranteed by the constitution, and have criticised the existing condition of society, and succored my fellow-citizens with my advice, which I regard as the right of every honest citizen. ”

“ Yet free speech is the rule, not the exception. The restraint to be constitutional must be based on more than fear, on more than passionate opposition against the speech, on more than a revolted dislike for its contents. There must be some immediate injury to society that is likely if speech is allowed. ”

“ When you stop free speech, when you say that a thought shall die in the womb of the brain,—why, it would have the same effect upon the intellectual world that to stop springs at their sources would have upon the physical world. ”

“ The greatest tools are civil liberties which we have been considering as "rights" or "privileges". The right to free speech is a great one; free speech probably was originally intended to protect property; it preserves liberty; the rights of assembly, of protest for redress, of a free press all have this double value, that they guarantee the integrity of the private man and protect the State. ”

“ But when a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters in his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all. ”

“ Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. To justify suppression of free speech, there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. ”

“ Let me premise, however, that I take no exception to the fact that my acts and opinions should be made the subject of examination and criticism by any body of men, or by any man. It is better that animadversion should be wrong than that it should not be free. Like Aristides, I would write the vote that should banish me, rather than to fetter or control the voter’s will. And now, having laid down these principles in favor of free speech for others, I proceed to exemplify them for myself. ”

“ The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it is very much better at all costs to hear every one's account of it, is a theory which has been justified upon the whole by experiment, but which remains a very daring and even a very surprising theory. ”

“ Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day; the denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.
"'In your own country you have pleaded for free speech, and when, under a wicked and an odious law, one of your fellow-citizens was imprisoned for the publication of his opinions, you, not sharing the opinions but faithful to liberty, sprang forward to defend in him the principle of free speech which you claimed for yourself, and sold his book while he lay in prison. ”

“ This sacred privilege is so essential to free government, that the security of property; and the freedom of speech, always go together; and in those wretched countries where a man can not call his tongue his own, he can scarce call any thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of the nation, must begin by subduing the freedom of speech; a thing terrible to publick traitors. ”

“ Abolition is a fool idea, but we must have free speech—that is what our Constitution is built upon! Law is supposed to protect free speech, even to voicing wrong ideas! Surely a man has a legal right to a wrong opinion! A mob in Boston to put down free speech!
This young lawyer was not an Abolitionist—not he, but he was an American, descended from the Puritans, with ancestors who fought in the War of the Revolution—he believed in fair play. ”

“ It were far better that the phrase be abandoned than that it be sounded once more to hide from the believers in an absolute right of free speech the plain fact that the interest in speech, profoundly important as it is, is no more conclusive in judicial review than other attributes of democracy or than a determination of the people's representatives that a measure is necessary to assure the safety of government itself. ”

“ If, in the long run, the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way. ”

“ They have come to realize, as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe for the world. I realize in speaking to you this afternoon that there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. ”

“ Such a government founds schools for all; looks after those most who are most in need; defends and protects the feeblest as well as the richest and most powerful. The state is for the individual, and for all the individuals, and so it reverences justice, where the rights of all, and the interests of all, exactly balance. It demands free speech; everything is open to examination, discussion, "agitation," if you will. Thought is to be free, speech to be free, work to be free, and worship to be free. ”

“ Dean Jones of Yale is credited with this definition of freedom of speech: "The liberty to say what you think without thinking what you say."
"I believe in free speech!" exclaimed the vociferous man.
"So do I," rejoined Uncle Bill Bottletop; "so do I. But in one respect free speech reminds me of the free lunch in the old days. You hate to see a man making a pig of himself just because something's free."
Words can be just as dangerous as acts. There is a common notion that the right of free speech implies the right to say anything we please and relieves a man of all responsibility for his words. ”

“ This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights -- among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. ”

“ That is not free speech. A man who does that is answerable for it, and for the result of his preaching, the result of his words. If it results in crime, he is responsible himself. Gentlemen, that is the law. ”

“ It is the pulpit and press, clerical robes and the prohibiting of free speech, that cradles and covers the sins of the world, — all unmitigated systems of crime; and it requires the enlightenment of these worthies, through civil and religious reform, to blot out all inhuman codes. ”

“ Free thought and free speech have brought about a universal freedom in criticism, so that, at the present time, singularly enough, it has come to be looked upon as a sign of high civilization and progress for every man to have an opinion about everything, whether he knows anything about it or not. ”

“ The first purpose it generally accomplishes, unless free speech is forbidden, (which is a dangerous undertaking on the part of the government,) and government usually listens to those warnings and obeys them. For no government dares to remain behind the people. But if government does not listen to them, the people are called together. ”

“ The old liberal principles of free speech, religious liberty, racial equality before the law and obedience to the law itself until it is altered by the will of the majority, is being attacked from both wings on the Left and Right. ”

“ If a man's privacy can be invaded at will, who can say he is free? If his every word is taken down and evaluated, or if he is afraid every word may be, who can say he enjoys freedom of speech? If his every association is known and recorded, if the conversations with his associates are purloined, who can say he enjoys freedom of association? When such conditions obtain, our citizens will be afraid to utter any but the safest and most orthodox thoughts; afraid to associate with any but the most acceptable people. Freedom as the Constitution envisages it will have vanished. ”

“ Upon what fair and honest principle can one man, or set of men, claim the right to restrain and suppress the power of speech in another, or even the power of speaking upon paper, whatever that other may think right? If such a practice there be, it is the practice of tyranny; yet very few people seem to have any idea of the importance of free discussion. ”

“ It is, perhaps, needless to say to our Socialist and radical readers that the questions of free speech and free press will, during the war, assume a most tremendous importance as a subject of discussion, public and legal. ”

“ It must never be forgotten, however, that the Bill of Rights was the child of the Enlightenment. Back of the guarantee of free speech lay faith in the power of an appeal to reason by all the peaceful means for gaining access to the mind. It was in order to avert force and explosions due to restrictions upon rational modes of communication that the guarantee of free speech was given a generous scope. But utterance in a context of violence can lose its significance as an appeal to reason and become part of an instrument of force. Such utterance was not meant to be sheltered by the Constitution. ”

“ 'Accordingly a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.' Id., at 4, 69 S.Ct. ”

“ The demands of free speech in a democratic society, as well as the interest [p525] in national security are better served by candid and informed weighing of the competing interests, within the confines of the judicial process, than by announcing dogmas too inflexible for the non-Euclidian problems to be solved. ”

“ The People evidently felt that the greatest of all political principles—that of Human Liberty—was hanging on the issue of this great political contest between intellectual giants, thus openly waged before the World—and they accordingly rose to the dignity and solemnity of the occasion, vindicating by their very example the sacredness with which the Right of Free Speech should be regarded at all times and everywhere. ”

“ In what country even less free can a man be more thoroughly browbeaten, arrested without trial, denied the privilege of a hearing and held against the written words of the nation’s own Constitution guaranteeing its citizens freedom of speech, of public gathering, of writing and publishing what they honestly feel? ”

“ The Free Speech League believes that every obstacle should be cast in the way of the capitalist opponents of free expression before submitting and that the widest publicity be given every such case, that public attention may be awakened and that what little freedom of speech we have should not be surrendered without a stubborn fight. ”

“ The government is regulating everything, the icing a housewife may not put on a cake, the number of courses one may have for dinner, even the conversation at table. Let an American with the habit of free speech beware! Notices conspicuously posted in public places advise, "Silence." In France they put it most picturesquely, "Say nothing. Be suspicious. The ears of the enemy are always open." Absolutely the only safe rule, then, is to learn to hold your tongue. ”

“ It is a matter of history now, and few men living realize the tremendous difficulties and anxious vicissitudes of that conflict of free thought and free speech with the organized interests and prejudices and passions of the slave power. ”

“ Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience (in this case the judge or the jury) that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance. ”

“ But to argue to-day for freedom of speech is to invite the charge of emphasizing the obvious. It may be wholesome to remind ourselves, by a few examples, that however universal the theory of free speech may be, the practice is still rather sporadic. ”

“ Free speech is an idea which has at present all the unpopularity of a truism; so that we tend to forget that it was not so very long ago that it had the more practical unpopularity which attaches to a new truth. ”

“ So far as free speech alone is concerned, there can be no ban or restriction or burden placed on the use of such a word except on showing of exceptional circumstances where the public safety, morality or health is involved or some other substantial interest of the community is at stake. ”