Jane Austen Quotes

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

The Iranian government advocates free speech... but there's no freedom after you've spoken

The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Many a time freedom has been rolled back - and always for the same sorry reason: fear.

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.

I do not favor the gag order.

The people in Cuba, they know what I stand for, and there's a lot of people in Cuba that stand for the same. But they can't say it.

There are men—now in power in this country—who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression so long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit.

In most of the countries where the people don’t like their government, we are now allowed to ask whether people like their government.

… to gag us from speaking truth, and discovering the tyrannies of bad men.

I was imprisoned for talking.

Governments pale in the face of truth. It’s the one thing they fear most.

Censors, the whole idea of it, is so childish. You feel like you're talking to hall monitors in school again.

The one indisputable reality of dictatorship is that dissent, insult, and malevolent language do not go unpunished if it is allowed at all.

We can't let censorship take over.

I prefer a little free speech to no free speech at all; but how many have free speech or the chance or the mind for it; and is not free speech here as elsewhere clamped down on in ratio of its freedom and danger?

None but the dead have free speech.

If I were to give liberty to the press, my power could not last three days.

In Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies.

One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.