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Free Speech Quotes

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Free Speech Quotes

“[F]orgetting takes multiple guises and sometimes infuses life in the most subtle and taken-for-granted ways. Therefore, forgetting consists not only of markers that indicate the erasure of knowledge, but also the habits, routines, and physical movements that lead one to present and practice detachment and hiding. It includes hiding the outward indicators of one’s religion. It is taking care when choosing one’s words in public, or even when speaking among family, so that the children will not learn what is supposed to be forgotten. Practicing these habits until they become ingrained and no longer require conscious attention makes forgetting a part of everyday life… In Ulaanbaatar (and the next-biggest city, Darkhan) the state built wedding palaces, thus making marriages and the establishment of families matters that came under state control. The alphabet, personal names, food, hairstyles, consumer goods, clothing, and fashions also changed due to the revolution. All this meant that the younger generations had little reference in everyday life from which to inquire about the past. When the memories of those belonging to an older generation contradicted the national narrative, there was little chance they would be heard by succeeding generations, whose ideological training and values conflicted with those of the past. “The erasure of socio-political context . . . allowed for the absorption of the particular (memories) into the general” (Steedly 1993:131), and furthered the homogenization of history and the nation. In a homogenizing society, to be a misfit, a reactionary, was not only a source of shame and public alienation, but also invited the threat of state intervention… Those of the next generation were born in the 1940s and 1950s, after most of the political massacres had been carried out. They grew up with socialist propaganda and were removed from the past, owing to the silencing of their parents’ memories and the dominance of the state’s narrative. The past seeped through to them accidentally, against the will of their parents… Often silences are a sign of powerlessness, not of the lack of a story to tell. As Tsing (1990:122) argues, power consists, at least in part, of the ability to convene an audience. According to Steedly (1993:198), this ability requires telling a compelling story that is strategically designed to meet the interests of the listeners.”

SpeechFree SpeechFree Speech Rights
Book:Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia
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“Hvis du tar til orde for at Europa en gang skal bli fritt for muslimer, tar du samtidig til orde, i beste fall, for en tvangsdeportering av mer enn femti millioner mennesker vekk fra det europeiske kontinentet. I verste fall tar du til orde for voldshandlinger mot en religiøs gruppering som allerede er sterkt utsatt for fordommer og hets. Hvis målet ditt er at islam skal utryddes fra Europa, kan du ikke samtidig påstå at du er fredelig sjel som aldri har hatt som formål å skade noen. Du må skjønne at politikken du forfekter faktisk handler om mennesker. Og du må tåle å bli møtt med motargumenter. At noen motsier argumentene dine betyr ikke at du knebles. Det betyr at du deltar i debatten.”

IslamGenocideFree SpeechFreedom Of SpeechExtremismXenophobiaRadicalismIslamophobiaDeportation
Book:Ytringsfrihet: 10 essays
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“Zaqar Publishing House, a beast of red brick and chipped plaster, protruded from the surrounding buildings like a broken branch in swamp muck. You could hear the whirring of the massive printing presses from the street. Soot and smoke coated the walls, making it look like a smudge. This was, of course, in the days before the paper’s façade had to yellow for it to survive.”

MediaFree SpeechPressYellow Journalism
Book:The Silent Symphony
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“[T]here is both an intrinsic and instrumental value to privacy. Intrinsically, privacy is precious to the extent that it is a component of a liberty. Part of citizenship in a free society is the expectation that one's personal affairs and physical person are inviolable so long as one remains within the law. A robust concept of freedom includes the freedom from constant and intrusive government surveillance of one's life. From this perspective, Fourth Amendment violations are objectionable for the simple fact that the government is doing something it has no licence to do–that is, invading the privacy of a law-abiding citizen by monitoring her daily activities and laying hands on her person without any evidence of wrongdoing. Privacy is also instrumental in nature. This aspect of the right highlights the pernicious effects, rather than the inherent illegitimacy, of intrusive, suspicionless surveillance. For example, encroachments on individual privacy undermine democratic institutions by chilling free speech. When citizens–especially those espousing unpopular viewpoints–are aware that the intimate details of their personal lives are pervasively monitored by government, or even that they could be singled out for discriminatory treatment by government officials as a result of their First Amendment expressive activities, they are less likely to freely express their dissident views.”

FreedomLibertyConstitutionPrivacyFree SpeechFirst AmendmentSurveillanceAmerican SocietyConstitutional RightsFourth AmendmentSurveillance Society
Book:A Government Of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State
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“Many of the verbal expressions that cause people to be detained on "mental health" grounds are — should be — protected speech. People who say things considered incomprehensible or illogical by the police or "mental health" workers are given ostensibly medical diagnoses and imprisoned for a limited time. That is, people who speak in a way those in authority disapprove of are punished, even if the speaker breaks no law. This blatant and often exercised limit on free speech is a "for your own good" exception to the First Amendment. There should be no such exception. But it is so woven into the fabric of American society and jurisprudence that virtually nobody objects. You can refuse a lifesaving treatment for cancer, but you cannot refuse to be jailed for saying something like, "I am Jesus" to the police when they are doing a "welfare check," a euphemism if there ever was one.”

Free SpeechPsychiatryPolicing
Author:Thomas Stephen Szasz
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“The mere fact that I exist means that I deserve to be here and to express myself any damn why I please.”

Inspirational QuotesSelf LoveTransformationSelf AwarenessHuman RightsSelf WorthFree SpeechDomestic ViolenceSpiritual AwakeningEmpowering QuotesSelf Love QuotesConfidence QuotesSelf Esteem QuotesSpiritual AwarenessLgbt QuotesLgbt RightsConfidence And AttitudeBorn This WayExpressing YourselfDivaSelf Esteem High Self ImageEmpowering Attitude
Author:Euphoria Godsent
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“Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

PoliticsSatireFree SpeechRationalityCritical ThinkingDonald TrumpFake NewsTrump Popularity Explained
Author:Paul Horner
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“I thought they’d fact-check it, and it’d make them look worse. I mean that’s how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it’s false, then they look like idiots. But Trump supporters — they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything! Now he’s in the White House. Looking back, instead of hurting the campaign, I think I helped it. And that feels [bad].”

PoliticsSatireFree SpeechRationalityCritical ThinkingDonald TrumpFake NewsTrump Popularity Explained
Author:Paul Horner
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“If you've made it this far in this book, you might be thinking yourself lucky. You might be feeling be feeling grateful that you never went to a tea party meeting, you never wrote a climate research paper, you never donated to Prop 8, you never supported Scott Walker, you never donated any money to ALEC, you never ran a company subject to shareholder proxies, you never volunteered for Americans for Prosperity, you have never had your speech rights assaulted. Only, you'd be wrong. You have. Every person in the United States of America did on Sept. 11, 2014. That day goes down in constitutional infamy. In some ways it shouldn't have come as a surprise. The Left started its intimidation game by trying to silence a non profit here a company there, a big donor here a trade associate there, but along the way it wrapped in small donors and scholars and scientists and petition signers and share holders and free market professors and grass root groups. It was only a matter of time before it came to the obvious conclusion - everybody has too much free speech. And so on Sept. 11, 2014, fifty four members of the senate democratic caucus voted to do something that has never been attempted in the history of the this glorious country. They voted to alter the first amendment.”

Free SpeechConstitutionalLiberals And PowerThe Intimidation Game
Author:Kimberly Strassel
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“This is a forum for readers. Authors walk these halls at their own risk. I’ve been to the Coliseum in Rome. GR is just that. Books are gladiators. Readers are ravenous citizens awaiting their next bite of entertainment, all Caesars with thumbs readied for judgement. Even champions fall prey to sword now and then. And you know what they say about the pen and the sword…the analogy is a bit muddled, but it’s in there somewhere.”

ReviewsFree SpeechWriters On WritingGoodreadsReadershipGladiatorsAuthors On AuthorsPen And Sword
Author:Willow Madison
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“Freedom of speech is a fallacy, it is not absolute. It can be hailed absolute only if the person possessing it, has the conscience to distinguish the right from the wrong, justice from injustice, acceptance from discrimination.”

AcceptanceBrainy QuotesHuman RightsEqualityDiscriminationBigotryFree SpeechFreedom Of SpeechStereotypesFreedom Of Speech Quotes
Book:Citizens of Peace: Beyond the Savagery of Sovereignty
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“Of the entire gamut of reforms proposed by Gorbachev, glasnost really did work and rapidly changed everything. Unlike everything else, to achieve it, you didn't have to do anything; you had only not to do anything. You hade to not prohibit, not censor, not dismiss journalists for articles they wrote. Stories began appearing in the press that made you wonder how they ever got published. It soon became clear that writing the truth was actually profitable: you were not kicked out of your job, no "administrative conclusions" were drawn, you became wildly popular, and the circulations of publications you worked for went through the roof. The ideological dam had begun to crack, and although the Soviet leaders tried desperately to shore it up, they couldn't. The news that a program had been removed from the national television channel's schedule provoked instant fury, as if these very protesters had not been living a year previously in a country where censorship was total...From 1987 onward the U.S.S.R. moved rapidly toward winning the world championship for free speech. The realization that you no longer went to prison for anything you said so delighted everyone that people tried to make up for the preceding seventy years lost to censorship. In October 1987 the national channel began airing Vzglyad (Viewpoint), which came to mean everything to me....Young presenters, also unlike the standard officious old codgers, covered a wide variety of news stories and discussed them in the studio. From time to time this was interrupted by videos of bands like DDT, Alisa, Kino, and Nautilus Pompilius. Seeing rock musicians with their socially relevant and often anti-Soviet songs on national television was fantastic. This was no longer a crack in the dam of censorship, but more like seeing it under fire from heavy artillery....For four years, Vzglyad was unquestionably the most popular broadcast in the Soviet Union. Its journalists and presenters became superstars who determined the way television developed. Their subsequent fates have been strikingly different. Vladislav Listyev, the mainstay of Vzglyad, was shot dead in the entrance to his apartment complex. Artyom Borovik, who had become one of the top investigative journalists, died in an airplane accident in 2000; my daughter went to a school named after him. Alexander Lyubimov, the Vzglyad journalist I most adored, now roams the state-run television and radio studios as a diligent Putinite. In 2007, when Putin's censorship was in full bloom, he invited me on his talk show on a radio station run by the state-owned gas company Gazprom. He was as smart as ever, had the same intonations I remembered so well from my childhood, but now was pushing the official line and had a clear understanding of what could be said and what was banned. I looked at him and the whole time felt such an urge to say, "For heaven's sake, Alexander, I became who I am thanks to you and your colleagues. For some reason, you betrayed all that." After Vzglyad, Konstantin Ernst hosted Matador, a program about the movies, every broadcast of which I watched. He now heads Channel One of state television and is a major Putin propagandist. The most repulsive, deceitful reports, including the infamous lie about a little Russian boy allegedly crucified by Ukrainian soldiers in front of his mother, aired on his watch... It seems incredible to believe that most of these people, who were at the wellspring of free speech in Russia, did not just hold their tongues after giving in to the temptation of easy money, but brought the same energy and initiative of their early days to bear as active propagandists of the new regime, foaming at the mouth as they defended acts of injustice and corruption.”

PropagandaFree SpeechSellout
Book:Patriot: A Memoir
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“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.”

WisdomPoliticsEducationSocietyFree SpeechSad But TrueIntellectual FreedomFourth EstateOld Is New
Author:Oscar Wilde
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“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what." [I saw hate in a graveyard -- Stephen Fry, The Guardian, 5 June 2005]”

WisdomHumorPoliticsPhilosophicalSarcasmCensorshipFree SpeechOffenseSlanderLibel
Author:Stephen Fry
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“People love to say, everybody is entitled to their opinions. It is one of the greatest fallacies of human habit. Everybody is not entitled to their opinion, not when their opinion advocates for segregation and discrimination. Freedom of speech doesn't mean saying whatever one wants, it means saying what's non-discriminatory, non-prejudicial and nonbarbarian. Bigots may have the right to say that all Mexicans are drug smugglers, all black and brown people are inferior humans, or all nonmuslims are infidels, inside the narrow bounds of their own house, but they are not entitled to express such opinion, when amidst people, amidst a civilized society. Remember, acceptance of bigotry and discrimination is the same as advocating for bigotry and discrimination.”

HateAcceptancePrejudiceDiscriminationFree SpeechFreedom Of SpeechHuman BehaviorSegregationOpinionsOpinions Vs Facts
Book:Citizens of Peace: Beyond the Savagery of Sovereignty
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“A study of the San Francisco Beat enclave by psychiatrist Dr. Francis Rigney in the late 1950's showed 60 percent "were so psychotic or crippled by tensions, anxiety and neurosis as to be nonfunctional in the competitive world." In contrast, the several studies released so far made of the student radicals at Berkeley show them to be stable, serious, and of above-average intelligence. The point is that the Beats had to "cop out" of the Rat Race because they couldn't perform; the New Left chooses to reject a society it could easily be successful in.”

BeatsActivismLiberalismFree SpeechRadicalismUc BerkeleyFree Speech MovementFsm
Author:Jack Newfield
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