Jean Rostand Quotes

... the greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong.

Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him.

The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong.

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

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.

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

In London I feel free; nobody bothers anyone and everyone is free to express themselves.

I always strive for freedom: freedom of thought and expression.

I'm a big advocate of freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought.

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

The lawsuits we are seeing today to ostracize and prevent different ideas recall previous eras. We must understand that Islam has given man freedom of thought. Islam's history proves that no one is immune to error except the Prophet.

A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular.

The long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

I will never inflict my values on you.

By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think and the right to think wrong.

That's the beauty of democracy — you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and as long as we're not hurting each other, that's fine. Placing a value judgment on a person's beliefs has no place in a democracy.

The doctrine of toleration requires a positive as well as a negative statement. It is not only wrong to burn a man on account of his creed, but it is right to encourage the open avowal and defense of every opinion sincerely maintained. Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.

A final argument for broad freedom of expression is its effect on the character of individuals in a society. Citizens in a free society must have courage — the courage to hear not only unwelcome political speech but novel and shocking ideas in science and the arts.

Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.’

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book so long as any document does not offend your own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.

Democracy depends on the idea that we hold each others’ right to express ourselves and be heard above our own desire to always get the outcomes we want. You can’t impose tolerance top-down.

A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

Everybody has to choose his or her own way to climb a mountain. I don't give an opinion. But there needs to be enough room for others.

We are all entitled to our own opinion.

Everyone has their own opinions, and they're entitled to them.