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2021 April 02
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"Our First Amendment expresses
a far different calculus for regulating speech
than for regulating nonexpressive conduct
and that is as it should be.
The right to swing your fist should end at the tip of my nose,
but your right to express your ideas
should not necessarily end at the lobes of my ears." |
"And what sort of philosophical doctrine is this -- that numbers confer unlimited rights, that they take from some persons all rights over themselves, and vest these rights in others. ... How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed. ... It is not possible to suppose, without absurdity, that a man should have no rights over his own body and mind, and yet have a 1/10,000,000th share in unlimited rights over all other bodies and minds?" |
"You've got to rattle your cage door.
You've got to let them know that you're in there,
and that you want out.
Make noise. Cause trouble.
You may not win right away,
but you'll sure have a lot more fun." |
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2021 April 01
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"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within
limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add
'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's
will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." |
"We are so concerned to flatter
the majority that we lose sight
of how very often it is necessary,
in order to preserve freedom
for the minority,
let alone for the individual,
to face that majority down." |
"Liberty requires restraints on popularly-elected leaders,
as well as from minorities, so that the individual is protected
from undue and arbitrary coercion by the state.
These restraints are provided by a plurality
of more or less equal and independent groups
which check and balance one another's power." |
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2021 March 31
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"Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking
are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom,
so also the individual’s freedom to choose his own creed is the
counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established
by the majority." |
"If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise,
we don’t believe in it at all." |
"I believe in my right to be wrong,
and still more in my right to be right." |
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2021 March 30
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"All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance --
unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the
prevailing climate of opinion, have the full protection of the
guarantees [of the First Amendment]." |
"When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent.
When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun.
Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet." |
"The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority,
practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two
bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them
slaves; a contest, that -- however bloody -- can, in the nature of
things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave." |
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2021 March 29
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"No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ...
Any man who has lived at all
knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ...
And if he does know it,
he knows also that neither he nor any man
ought to be allowed to decide a single human fate." |
"The individual is the true reality of life.
A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State,
nor for that abstraction called 'society,' or the 'nation,'
which is only a collection of individuals." |
"The jaws of power are always open to devour,
and her arm is always stretched out, if possible,
to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." |
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