Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"If any opinion be compelled to silence, that opinion may,
for aught we can certainly know, be true.
To deny this is to assume our own infallibility."

~ John Stuart Mill  

"It was not by accident or coincidence that
the rights to freedom in speech and press
were coupled in a single guaranty
with the rights of the people peaceably
to assemble and to petition for redress of grievances.
All these, though not identical, are inseparable.
They are cognate rights, and therefore
are united in the first Article’s assurance."

~ Judge Wiley B. Rutledge  

"The problem of freedom in America
is that of maintaining a competition of ideas,
and you do not achieve that by silencing one brand of idea."

~ Max Lerner  

~ John Stuart Mill  

"A free press stands as one of the great interpreters between the government and the people. To allow it to be fettered is to fetter ourselves."

~ Justice George Sutherland  

"Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity,
but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt."

~ Walter Bagehot  

"If you admit that to silence your opponent by force
is to win an intellectual argument,
then you admit the right to silence people by force."

~ Hans Eysenck  

"Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions,
but those who kindly reprove thy faults."

~ Socrates  

"The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power."

~ William Shakespeare  

"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without
prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their
customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common,
but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent,
discussion is apt to become worse than useless."

~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi  

"Free inquiry requires that we tolerate diversity of opinion and that we respect the right of individuals to express their beliefs, however unpopular they may be, without social or legal prohibition or fear of success."

~ Paul Kurtz  

"There’s a whiff of the lynch mob
or the lemming migration
about any over-large concentration
of like-minded individuals,
no matter how virtuous their cause."

~ P. J. O'Rourke  

"The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence
in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind."

~ Felix Frankfurter  

"Human progress is furthered,
not by conformity,
but by aberration."

~ H. L. Mencken  

"The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any government regulation of religious beliefs as such. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold views abhorrent to the authorities."

~ Justice William J. Brennan