El-P Quotes

Freedom of expression and freedom of speech aren't really important unless they're heard. The freedom of hearing is as important as the freedom of speaking.

Freedom of speech means freedom for those who you despise, and freedom to express the most despicable views. It also means that the government cannot pick and choose which expressions to authorize and which to prevent.

Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they express, or the words they speak or write.

The most beautiful thing in the world is freedom of speech.

The American public is capable of doing its own censoring… If you curtail what the other fellow says and does, you curtail what you yourself may say and do.

Speech should be fruitful as well as free.

It's obvious that I come down on the side of free speech for anybody's work.

I have the freedom to say what I want to say.

I think political correctness really does help us when it serves us but it doesn't help us when it silences us.

Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.

Freedom of speech is a great thing and we have said nothing that is not allowed.

There is no danger is letting people have their say. ... There is a danger when you try to stop them from saying it.

To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily deprives others of the right to listen to those views.

Every religion has its dignity ... in freedom of expression there are limits.

As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.

Does freedom of speech give the right to offend?

It is amazing how many people act as if the right to free speech includes the right to be free of criticism for what you say - which means that other people should not have the same right to free speech that they claim for themselves.

All I care about is free speech and free expression; I want people to be able to be, do, and say anything.

It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

The United States is a land of free speech. Nowhere is speech freer - not even here where we sedulously cultivate it even in its most repulsive form.

I don't believe in censorship.

The first amendment ensures not that speech will be fair, but that it will be free. It cannot be both.

My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.

Such expression is impossible in a cramped atmosphere. As I have no desire to offer civil disobedience I cannot write freely. As the author of satyagraha I cannot, consistently with my profession, suppress the vital part of myself for the sake of being able to write on permissible subjects. ... It would be like dealing with the trunk without the head.

You get to say that the Earth is flat because we live in a country that guarantees your free speech. But it's not a country that guarantees that anything you say is correct.