Herbert Marcuse Quotes

The individual is greater than the state.

I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.

The human's being right to do as he pleases without interfering with someone else's rights is a formula defining rights prior to social legislation.

Personal liberty is not personal license.

I have an opinion. I have a right to have one, and that's the way I feel.

I can't believe people think they need permission to drive. Or permission to do anything.

As a human being, I do feel like it's my right to be able to stand up for and speak on whatever I want.

If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged.

Censorship, telling people how to live their lives I completely disagree with.

America is very much about individual happiness, the right to expression, self-determination. In America you do need to point to harm befalls victims before you can limit someone else's rights.

'Truth Will Set U Free' is about honesty. My philosophic belief that ultimately being true to yourself is liberating, with every individual's inalienable right to be who they are without fear or recrimination.

That I have the right to express myself freely at all times in all circumstances entails the idea that free speech is a 'basic human right' possessed by each individual, and, as such, trumps the interests of the society or group, including my neighbour.

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

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.

The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.

Liberty has restraints but no frontiers.

If our hard-earned liberty, our desire to be irreverent of the old and to question the new, can be reduced to one, basic and indispensable right, it must be the right to free speech.

I feel like freedom of speech is one of the great things in this country and the freedom to do what you feel is right.

I grew up in a family that despised not only communism but collectivism, socialism, and any 'ism' that deprived the individual of his or her natural rights.

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 sanctity of a woman's right to control her own destiny is a moral force of its own... I came to realize that the question of choice is to be answered, not by the state, but by the individual.

Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.

The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.

Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty.