John F. Kennedy Quotes

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.

A free press stands as one of the great interpreters between the government and the people. To allow it to be fettered is to fetter ourselves.

Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful.

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.

No government ought to be without censors: & where the press is free, no one ever will.

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we are sure, stifling would be an evil still.

We promote pluralism, not dogma. We critique, we do not accept uncritically. We question and we debate, and over time we will separate the wheat from the chaff. We will separate the worthwhile from the misguided in all the new ideas and new voices that we hear. But we cannot do that if we close ourselves from the contrarian view, or simply suppress the views of those who would challenge the accepted and the known.

Every person must be his own watchman for the truth, because the forefathers did not trust government to separate the true from the false for us.

All I claim, all I plead for, is liberty of thought and expression. That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is absolutely true, but what I think is true. I do not pretend to tell all the truth..

Without free speech no search for Truth is possible; without free speech no discovery of Truth is useful; without free speech progress is checked, and the nations no longer march forward towards the nobler life which the future holds for man. Better a thousand-fold 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.

Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.

And we have got to fight [communism] with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn't America.

Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought.

Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

The problem of freedom in America is that of maintaining a competition of ideas, and you do not achieve that by silencing one brand of idea.

I hate the idea of sheltering kids from challenging books. It's just another form of conservative fear that promotes ignorance more than anything else.

I try to do that in this book without preaching - to try to do as you just said that you really have to defend the First Amendment rights of everybody.

I do not want the voice of the people shut out.

A public figure cannot control what people say in open meetings.

This country is about, in my judgment, aggressive, open debate. There is an old saying: When everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking very much.

The First Amendment rejects red tape, cover-up and double-speak.

In Iran, people are free to express their views. Every day, some people criticize the policies of the government.

I believe in freedom of speech, but I believe we should also have the right to comment on freedom of speech.