In the long run [censorship] will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.

The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.

The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.

The English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion - unless he happens to be an American, when his ignorance of good manners is indulged.

Whether history will judge this war to be different or not we cannot say. But this we can say with certainty: A government and a society that silences those who dissent is one that has lost its way.

Every effort to confine Americanism to a single pattern, to constrain it to a single formula, is disloyalty to everything that is valid in Americanism.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.