Oppression of Speech Quotes

For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

It's not mainland China that rubs me up the wrong way, it is the dictatorship that rubs me up the wrong way. It's the freedom that we Chinese people are not allowed that rubs me up the wrong way.

The weapons of reason and argument are insufficient to put down discussion; we can therefore hear no argument upon the subject, for our opinions are unalterably fixed. Slave States will provide for their own protection, and those who speak against Slavery will do well to keep out of their bounds, or they will punish them.

Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and will always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.

No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanly directed in the first instance.

In Africa, there is much confusion.... Before, there was no radio, or other forms of communication.... Now, in Africa ... the government talks, people talk, the police talk, the people don't know anymore. They aren't free.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.

The U.S. affirms freedom of speech.[Vladimir] Putin is no friend of freedom of speech.

If there is no free speech, every single life has lived in vain

There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans ... and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.

The Cuban people do not live in freedom.

I prefer a little free speech to no free speech at all; but how many have free speech or the chance or the mind for it; and is not free speech here as elsewhere clamped down on in ratio of its freedom and danger?

When people try to stop free speech, stop people from talking, it creates pressure in the system that might cause people to act out.

If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.

I grew up learning firsthand what it was like to flee communism and oppression.

Writing anything is a treason of sorts.

I think we are in fact, losing free speech. We don't seem to care though. Many of us don't seem to notice. We will have to do a lot of work to bring back the American way to America.

We should be very skeptical of people who want to place limits on how we express ourselves.

Censoring what you say is one of the ways in which people who are not nice can take away your personal freedom.