Jack Kevorkian Quotes

I have lived under totalitarian Communism, so I prize freedom as much as anyone and have long fought for freedom of conscience and speech.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

Governments whose authority is ebbing have been increasingly brazen in their attempts to silence critics.

In the U.S., the country that has always been lecturing the world about the value of freedoms - of freedom of speech, of everyone's right to speak up - the U.S. has now become a beacon, a leader, in this movement to shut everyone up. That's so disappointing.

I believe in it so passionately because anywhere you look in the world, where governments become too big or become authoritarian, speech and expression is one of the first fundamental freedoms to go.

I grew up under a dictatorship. I knew what it meant for people to not have the ability to freely express themselves.

European values, civil rights, freedom of speech, freedom of information, and freedom of assembly are being violated by Spain's central government.

None but the dead have free speech.

Where there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.

You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.

Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

Free speech is the cornerstone to every right we have.

It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick.

I shall stand for freedom of thought and expression in a place where it has been trampled and penalized.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

The Cuban people still live in constant fear of a brutal totalitarian regime that has demonstrated time and again its utter disregard for basic human dignity. The fight for a free Cuba has gone on for far too long.

The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

I hope that I will be the last victim in China's long record of treating words as crimes.

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

I worry about censorship in many parts of the world.