Freedom to protest against the status quo....

Liberty has never come from the government.  Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.  The history of liberty is a history of resistance.  ~Woodrow Wilson

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks.  Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools.  And their grandchildren are once more slaves.  ~D.H. Lawrence

Books won't stay banned -
Ideas won't go to jail.
~Alfred Whitney Griswold


You can cage the singer but not the song.  ~Harry Belafonte

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

George Washington (1732-1799) First President of the USA.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish philosopher and writer.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. John Milton (1608-1674) English poet.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. Salman Rushdie (1948-?) Anglo-Indian novelist.

A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything. Napoleon I (1769-1821) Napoleon Bonaparte. French general.

History does not teach fatalism.  There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.  ~Charles de Gaulle


Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower


Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake,... of searching and experimenting,... of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political.  ~Ignazio Silone,The God That Failed, 1950


Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree.  ~Thomas Campbell



Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081.  First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs.  Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.  And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.  ~Gerard K. O'Neill, 2081

Liberty has never come from the government.  Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.  The history of liberty is a history of resistance.  ~Woodrow Wilson

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks.  Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools.  And their grandchildren are once more slaves.  ~D.H. Lawrence

Books won't stay banned -
Ideas won't go to jail.
~Alfred Whitney Griswold


You can cage the singer but not the song.  ~Harry Belafonte

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

George Washington (1732-1799) First President of the USA.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish philosopher and writer.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. John Milton (1608-1674) English poet.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. Salman Rushdie (1948-?) Anglo-Indian novelist.

A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything. Napoleon I (1769-1821) Napoleon Bonaparte. French general.

History does not teach fatalism.  There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.  ~Charles de Gaulle


Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower


Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake,... of searching and experimenting,... of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political.  ~Ignazio Silone,The God That Failed, 1950


Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree.  ~Thomas Campbell



Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081.  First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs.  Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.  And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.  ~Gerard K. O'Neill, 2081


Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.  ~Abraham Lincoln


I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.  ~Simone de Beauvoir


My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.  ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952


It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.  ~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler


We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.  ~Robert J. McCracken


You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.  ~Robert Frost


For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.  ~Thomas Paine


In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.  ~Moshe Dayan


There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.  ~Charles Kingsley


No one is free when others are oppressed.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom means choosing your burden.  ~Hephzibah Menuhin


Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.  ~Jeffrey Borenstein


Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.  ~Harry Emerson Fosdick


The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.  ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, New York City, 28 August 1952


They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.  ~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759


Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, - Necessity and Free Will.  ~Thomas Carlyle, Essays, "The Opera"

We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.  ~Felix Frankfurter


No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.  ~Frederick Douglass, speech, Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1883


Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.  ~George Washington


I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.  ~James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788


Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.  ~Mahatma Gandhi


Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
~William Cowper


The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.  ~Daniel Webster


Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.  ~Albert Camus


I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.  ~Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888


Without freedom, no one really has a name.  ~Milton Acorda


A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.  ~Baron de Montesquieu


Liberty means responsibility.  That is why most men dread it.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, "Maxims: Liberty and Equality," 1905


Freedom is never free.  ~Author Unknown


We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.  ~Ricardo Flores Magon, speech, 31 May 1914

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.  ~John Stuart Mill,On Liberty, 1859


The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.  ~Tommy Smothers

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.  ~Voltaire,Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764


Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.  ~Voltaire

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, On Liberty, 1859


Books won't stay banned.  They won't burn.  Ideas won't go to jail.  In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.  The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.  ~Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959


A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.  ~Albert Camus


To reject the word is to reject the human search.  ~Max Lerner, 1953, on book purging


What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books.  ~Sigmund Freud, 1933


Every burned book enlightens the world.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The paper burns, but the words fly away.  ~Akiba ben Joseph


Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?" ~Joseph Henry Jackson


If you don't have this freedom of the press, then all these little fellows are weaseling around and doing their monkey business and they never get caught.  ~Harold R. Medina


The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.  ~David Ben-Gurion


If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.  ~Claude-Adrien Helvétius

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.  ~John F. Kennedy

God forbid that any book should be banned.  The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.  ~Rebecca West

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.  ~Noam Chomsky


Every human being has a right to hear what other wise human beings have spoken to him.  It is one of the Rights of Men; a very cruel injustice if you deny it to a man!  ~Thomas Carlyle



I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.  ~Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire, 1906, a description of Voltaire's attitude, commonly misattributed to Voltaire, the closest of his documented sentiments being "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." in a 1770 letter 

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) American author and poet.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) British author.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.  ~Abraham Lincoln


I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.  ~Simone de Beauvoir


My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.  ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952


It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.  ~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler


We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.  ~Robert J. McCracken


You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.  ~Robert Frost


For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.  ~Thomas Paine


In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.  ~Moshe Dayan


There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.  ~Charles Kingsley


No one is free when others are oppressed.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom means choosing your burden.  ~Hephzibah Menuhin


Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.  ~Jeffrey Borenstein


Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.  ~Harry Emerson Fosdick


The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.  ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, New York City, 28 August 1952


They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.  ~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759


Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, - Necessity and Free Will.  ~Thomas Carlyle, Essays, "The Opera"


We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.  ~Felix Frankfurter


No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.  ~Frederick Douglass, speech, Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1883


Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.  ~George Washington


I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.  ~James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788


Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.  ~Mahatma Gandhi


Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
~William Cowper


The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.  ~Daniel Webster


Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.  ~Albert Camus


I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.  ~Author Unknown


Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.  ~Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888


Without freedom, no one really has a name.  ~Milton Acorda


A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.  ~Baron de Montesquieu


Liberty means responsibility.  That is why most men dread it.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, "Maxims: Liberty and Equality," 1905


Freedom is never free.  ~Author Unknown


We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.  ~Ricardo Flores Magon, speech, 31 May 1914

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.  ~John Stuart Mill,On Liberty, 1859


The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.  ~Tommy Smothers

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.  ~Voltaire,Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764


Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.  ~Voltaire

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, On Liberty, 1859


Books won't stay banned.  They won't burn.  Ideas won't go to jail.  In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.  The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.  ~Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959


A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.  ~Albert Camus


To reject the word is to reject the human search.  ~Max Lerner, 1953, on book purging


What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books.  ~Sigmund Freud, 1933


Every burned book enlightens the world.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The paper burns, but the words fly away.  ~Akiba ben Joseph


Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?" ~Joseph Henry Jackson


If you don't have this freedom of the press, then all these little fellows are weaseling around and doing their monkey business and they never get caught.  ~Harold R. Medina


The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.  ~David Ben-Gurion


If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.  ~Claude-Adrien Helvétius

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.  ~John F. Kennedy

God forbid that any book should be banned.  The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.  ~Rebecca West

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.  ~Noam Chomsky


Every human being has a right to hear what other wise human beings have spoken to him.  It is one of the Rights of Men; a very cruel injustice if you deny it to a man!  ~Thomas Carlyle



I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.  ~Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire, 1906, a description of Voltaire's attitude, commonly misattributed to Voltaire, the closest of his documented sentiments being "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." in a 1770 letter 

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) American author and poet.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) British author.

"I want to suggest to you that citizens of free societies, democracies, do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow-citizen's opinions, even their most cherished beliefs.

In free societies, you must have the free play of ideas. There must be argument, and it must be impassioned and untrammeled.

A free society is not calm and eventless place - that is the kind of static, dead society dictators try to create.

Free societies are dynamic, noisy, turbulent, and full of radical disagreements.

Skepticism and freedom are indissolubly linked; and it is the skepticism of journalists, their show-me, prove-it unwillingness to be impressed, that is perhaps their most important contribution to the freedom of the free world.

It is the disrespect of journalists-for power, for orthodoxies, for party lines, for ideologies, for vanity, for arrogance, for folly, for pretension, for corruption, for stupidity, maybe even for editors-that I would like to celebrate...and that I urge you all, in freedom's name, to preserve." 

Salman Rushdie