The American people...have a stake in non-conformity. For they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

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.

To yearn for a single, and usually simple, explanation of the chaotic materials of the past, to search for a single thread in that most tangled of all skeins, is a sign of immaturity.

If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.

The Americans who framed our Constitution felt that without freedom of religion no other freedom counted.

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

Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.