Walter Lippmann Quotes

I believe in a free market of ideas and not shying away from debate.

That's what we're missing. We're missing argument. We're missing debate. We're missing colloquy. We're missing all sorts of things. Instead, we're accepting.

Maybe politically it wasn't wise but when people have different view points I think the public has a right to hear it and the public has a right to make decisions based on those view points.

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.

I think most people like a bit of freedom and hearing things that they might not agree with, rather than just having everybody shutting their mouths.

I think debate is good. Everyone has an opinion, and it's definitely healthy to voice those.

I invite a variety people on my show with wide-ranging opinions - sometimes even my jaw hits the floor, too - but I let them speak. Whether it's left, right, or center, I want to expose my viewers to other perspectives. Agree with them or not, the nation needs to listen.

I have always believed in the marketplace of ideas.

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

'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation. No man can learn to reason and appraise from a mere perusal of the writing of others. If he live not in the world, where he can observe the public at first hand and be directed toward solid reality by the force of conversation and spoken debate, then he must sharpen his discrimination and regulate his perceptive balance by an equivalent exchange of ideas in epistolary form.

Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate.

We will not put a lid on opinions. On the contrary, it is more important than ever that political debates are open and free, even on the most difficult issues. Especially on the most difficult issues. The task is to encourage controversial debates in a form that strengthens democracy.

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

Freedom rings where opinions clash.

The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.

As soon as you judge communication a little more rigorously, there is a possibility that the message will not be democratized. I have to say what I believe to be right. I have to spread out the statement among all the means of expression available to us at present.

Open debate is our strongest tool in standing up to extremism. The far more dangerous avenue is to force extremist ideas underground, where they can fester without competition.

When everyone is unanimous, I wonder whether they are right…. George, at every meeting henceforth I want you to make the most cogent and articulate argument against the war and I will never stop you.

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

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.

The very essence of modern life is the opportunity for people everywhere to speak, hear, persuade, change their minds, know what others are thinking, and think for themselves.

… 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.

I think it's important to have conversation about things instead of shutting things down.

You've got to ensure that the holders of an opinion, however unpopular, are allowed to put across their points of view.