Andrew Scheer 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.

Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.

Whatever I read about Emergency as a part and process of my film, I can say, as a citizen of a democratic country called India, I am certainly not 'for' Emergency, a decision that snatched away the normalcy of human life for 21 months.

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.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered Expression

Our liberty cannot depend on the good intention of those in power.

The surest way to make our youth suspect that there may be something in Communism would be for the government to outlaw it.

There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.

We cannot have a society in which some dictator somewhere can impose censorship here in the United States.

In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own.... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

The most repressive societies have always restricted speech the most — and when people are finally able to speak, they often call for change.

In the United States, we can do almost anything we want. It's not like Egypt, where you're going to get murdered by the security forces.

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

Freedom of speech is a human right and the foundation upon which democracy is built. Any restriction of freedom of speech is a restriction upon democracy.

In Canada, the U.S. and most of Europe it may be easy to take political stands, this is something for which you can be forced to pay with your life, or your freedom, in many other parts of the world, from Iran to Russia to Pakistan to China.

After visits to several Communist countries (USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, East Germany, Vietnam, China, Cuba), I feel strongly that most "revolutionary" types around the world don't realize the importance of freedom of the press and the air, a right to peaceably assemble and discuss anything, including the dangers of such discussions.

Without democracy freedom is a chimera

Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Despite all the gains for democracy in the world, in many countries anyone who wants to publish truths unwelcome to the government risks suppression and criminal punishment.

The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don't have that.

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.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.