Ben Domenech Quotes

The long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas. Thus it permits the freest expression of views before students, trusting to their good sense in passing judgment on these views. Only in this way can it best serve American democracy.

It is the business of culture to make us able to consider with intelligent interest all real opinions, even those we do not and can not accept.

Poking fun at other people's beliefs, while it may seem frivolous and offensive, is a non-negotiable right. It is a principle that underpins free speech, the basis for progress.

I suspect that no community will become humane and caring by restricting what its members can say.

I am absolutely opposed to political correctness. You cannot confront hate speech until you've experienced it. You need to hear every side of the issue instead of just one.

I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.

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.

No errors of opinion can possibly be dangerous in a country where opinion is left free to grapple with them.

I believe in absolute freedom of expression. Everyone has a right to offend and be offended.

I want to find someone on the earth so intelligent that he welcomes opinions which he condemns.

The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.

I always tell my students: I don't care which side you're on. I respect you too much to try to persuade you in 120 minutes a week, much less lure you into pretending that you agree with me. All I want is for you to own this democracy, to see yours, to have a stake in it.

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Brown’s core value of promoting the free and open exchange of ideas is bedrock to our capacity to fulfill our mission as a university. This value applies not only when ideas are agreeable and aligned with our own. Protecting the right to free expression and promoting open discourse is even more essential when ideas are divergent, abhorrent or even hurtful.

… 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.

Everyone has a right to say what they want, but what they have to say doesn't interest me.

Not all ideas will be accepted, but every idea deserves its own space, and every idea deserves to be expressed.

I think it is important to speak your mind. Tolerance of the ignorance sends the wrong message to kids.

People have their own opinions, they have the right to express them, they just don't have the right to attack you.

Hate speech can't be a part of free speech.

Free speech should never mean hate speech.

To try to preemptively shut down debate with name-calling is profoundly un-American and will harm this country.

It's important to be the gatekeeper against dangerous ideas.

It is perfectly acceptable in a free and liberal society to criticize, debate, mock, and reject any ideology.