Maajid Nawaz Quotes

Well, I'm not afraid to say something if I think it's funny, even if it's harsh or racist.

I was a kid and it was kind of scabrous, and it wasn't the sacrilege that bothered me so much as the obscenity that challenged a 14-year-old American. But over the years, I came to have a keen appreciation of Charlie Hebdo and what it did.

Charlie Hebdo was and is not The Onion or "The Daily Show." This is a different kind of satire. Might I put it this way - less politically correct.

Ever since I came to Congress in 1992, there are those who have been trying to silence my voice. I've been told to 'sit down and shut up' over and over again. Well, I won't sit down and I won't shut up until the full and unvarnished truth is placed before the American people.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Over the years, my marks on paper have landed me in all sorts of courts and controversies - I have been comprehensively labelled; anti-this and anti-that, anti-social, anti-football, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-science, anti-republican, anti-American, anti-Australian - to recall just an armful of the antis.

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.

I'm an entertainer. Not a journalist or spokesman for anybody. Truth is, a lot of my listeners absolutely hate what I have to say.

I don't think any media has to feel obliged to show the cover of 'Charlie Hebdo.'

I won't ever got to a place that's racist, and I will tell everybody else not to and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist.

Britain is obsessed with political correctness.

I don't believe in this idea of, 'That's hate speech, stop it.'

I also love the makers of South Park, because they're political, strong, and they're making all of these comments that would get you shot for if you did it in a drama.

Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.

If liberalism is to mean anything at all, it is duty bound to support without hesitation the dissenting individual over the group, the heretic over the orthodox, innovation over stagnation, and free speech over offense.

It is easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we agree.

I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I've been challenged by so many people, and I don't frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn't have time either.

Comedy can always be taken the wrong way. If I do a bit that is meant to diffuse racism or sexism, I'm not going to avoid it on the chance that a small portion of the audience might take it the wrong way.

Political correctness? In my humor, I never talk about politics. I was never much into all that.

One does not arrest Voltaire.

In Canada we respect freedom of speech but we do not worship it.

These cartoons are an unnecessary abuse of freedom of speech.

A book is only dangerous when it unmasks something that many people want hidden or it brings to the forefront an issue that many want marginalized.

We are the only country that allows and protects hate speech.

Without free speech no search for Truth is possible; without free speech no discovery of Truth is useful; without free speech progress is checked, and the nations no longer march forward towards the nobler life which the future holds for man. Better a thousand-fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day; the denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.