Robin Williams Quotes

Because I don't believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

There shouldn't be any censorship on making a film.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

The liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man would venture to write on any subject however pure his purpose, without an attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other. From minds thus subdued by the fear of punishment, there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason, nor any masterly compositions on the general nature of governmetn ...

We do not fear censorship for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue—the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word, that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.

Silence the artist and you have silenced the most articulate voice the people have.

As for basic jokes about sex and even my religious stuff, I don't find any problems with that, even if I'm gigging in the Bible Belt, because religious people don't come and see me.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirize all orthodoxies, it ceases to exist. Language and the imagination cannot be imprisoned, or art will die, and with it, a little of what makes us human.

Whatever happens in life can happen on the stage, but as a comedian you should always be clear what your target is. It's fine to be gratuitously tasteless if that's what you are intending to do. It's that old line: I don't defend what a comedian might say but I defend to the death his right to say it.

People in life quote as they please, so we have the right to quote as we please. Therefore I show people quoting, merely making sure that they quote what pleases me

I feel like the internet has encouraged people to look into things and try to find issuesthat because people have a lot of opinions. I think it's really important to encourage artistic freedom. I think if you inhibit that, that could be dangerous.

Everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.

I don't believe in censorship.

Something will be offensive to someone in every book, so you've got to fight it.

It was a book [George Packer written on our presence in Nigeria] that was killed by the response of other people. Which sounds quite cowardly, perhaps, but it was the first manifestation of what is currently a really big issue: how political correctness defines the limits of what you can do. In that sense, it was super-exciting and maybe the most magical project we did, but at the same time fraught with mixed feelings.

You do what you're supposed to do, but you have to be honest about what they're doing. When you do a comedy show on a network the problem is there are going to be a bunch of people who aren't comedians that are going to tell you what's funny.

I think all the funny people were bullied. When they talk about outlawing bullying, it's like, what? You want no Comedy Central?

I believe for freedom. I believe that people should express themselves the way they want, except as it does in the way that's not nice, but it is what it is.

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.

In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. It is time to get fierce.

Whether these were liberal publications or conservative publications, whether they were mainstream or slightly to the side of the mainstream; out of the mainstream, they all believed that they had the right to tell you how to stylize yourself. And from the New York Times to the much more left-winged nation. And The Voice said, no, whatever you want to. You drew whatever you want to, we'll publish it. Nobody was doing that. Nobody does it today. The Voice is no longer that paper, and editorializing is now in the hands of editors, with few exceptions.

If somebody accuses you in a story of being a crook, you can demand that they prove it. But if a comic says it and you protest, people say, 'What's the matter, you can't take a joke?

I love to do the things the censors won't pass.

I believe in freedom of expression, I don't believe in censorship.

I love free speech.