James Madison Quotes

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.

I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

Free speech is the cornerstone to every right we have.

We live in a free world, so everyone can say whatever.

Fundamentally, I do agree, certainly, people must be allowed to express their own opinions freely. Freedom is part of the essential rights of all nations.

Everyone has the right to express his thoughts, to express himself as he wants.

The Liberty of Conscience and of the Press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any authority of the United States

People have a right to express themselves.

Everyone has the right to their own opinion.

I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.

All men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others.

The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.

I think the freedom to express one's views is more important than intellectual property.

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution . .

The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon . . . has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right.

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

You have a right to say what you believe, and I have a right.

Under democracy, individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded.

Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.

The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, “Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?

Liberty is the only idea which circulates with the human blood, in all ages, in all countries, and in all literature - liberty that is, and what cannot be separated from liberty, a love of country.

As for me, my literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one main idea, to wit, the idea of freedom. I am, in brief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety, and know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems (at the moment) to be the truth