Lee Hsien Loong Quotes

Academic freedom carries with it the right to heresy as well as the right to restate and defend the traditional views.

I believe that people should be able to question things.

There needs to be a place in the church or just outside - there needs to be a place where people feel free to ask questions without being put upon, where they feel free to ask difficult, challenging questions to voice their skepticism.

You know, everybody believes in free speech until you start questioning them about it.

In the absence of debate unrestricted utterance leads to the degradation of opinion .... The more rational is overcome by the less rational, and the opinions that will prevail will be those that are held most ardently by those with the most passionate will. For that reason the freedom to speak can never be maintained merely by objecting to interference with the liberty of the press, of printing, of broadcasting, of the screen. It can be maintained only by promoting debate.

I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant

If printers (publishers) only printed that which everyone liked, there would be very little printed

As far as I'm concerned, there is no subject that's off the table.

There is nothing wrong with intellectual differences flowing from freedom of thought as long as such differences remain confined to intellectual debates.

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

If your library is not 'unsafe', it probably isn't doing its job.

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 love disagreements. I love the democratic process. If I'm in a room where everybody agrees, I start to nod off.

Don’t let religious authorities decide what can or can't be published, …. free speech is vital for democracy, for social change, for the possibility of challenging what has been laid down by established authorities…. freedom only for those who do not offend, annoy, and irritate entrenched authorities - is no freedom at all.

It is not the writer's task to answer questions but to question answers. To be impertinent, insolent, and, if necessary, subversive.

Honest difference of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy among free men.

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

All governments must displease many persons, and these having now regular organs, and being able to express their sentiments, opinions adverse to the measures of government would often be expressed.

We have pledged our honor that the paper we edit will discuss any subject we have a mind. ...

Science requires much more than money and projects. Science requires freedom: freedom to enquire, to challenge, to think, and to envision the unimagined. We must be able to question convention and arbitrate our disputes by the rules of evidence. It is the content of scientific work that matters, not the persons who produced it, regardless of the color of their skin, the god they choose to worship, the ethnic group they were born into, or their gender. These are the values of science, but even more, they are societal values worth defending, not just to promote the pursuit of science but to have a better and more humane society.

… if freedom of speech means anything, it means a willingness to stand and let people say things with which we disagree, and which do weary us considerably.

Men must also be allowed the publication of their opinions, if this be done with decency and seriousness, for the learned can have no right to say that they are in possession of the truth, still less can the unlearned, unless every grave man can offer his opinions, be they what they may…

Academic freedom and free speech mean the right to consider ideas with which you might disagree.

Mutual commitment to ideals - yes; the stifling of all dissenting notions - no.

The most subversive people are those who ask questions.