Quotes About Speech

Without free speech no search for Truth is possible; without free speech no discovery of Truth is useful; without free speech progress is checked, and the nations no longer march forward towards the nobler life which the future holds for man. Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day; but the denial stays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.

I wish that Google would realize its own power in the cause of free speech. The debate has been often held about Google's role in acceding to the Chinese government's demands to censor search results. Google says that it is better to have a hampered internet than no internet at all. I believe that if the Chinese people were threatened with no Google, they might even rise up and demand free speech - free search and links - from their regime. Google lives and profits by free speech and must use its considerable power to become a better guardian of it.

How any human being ever has had the impudence to speak against the right to speak, is beyond the power of my imagination. Here is a man who speaks-who exercises a right that he, by his speech, denies. Can liberty go further than that? Is there any toleration possible beyond the liberty to speak against liberty-the real believer in free speech allowing others to speak against the right to speak?

After my recent brush with voicelessness, I thought I'd share with you a few thoughts about speech. Don't take it lightly my friends. If music is the pathway to the heart as Voltaire suggested, then speech is the pathway to other people. Live in silence and you live alone.

When we speak freely, let us speak plainly, for plain speech is wholesome; especially, plain speech about public affairs and public men.

Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.

The Bible is all God's speech, as well as all mediated through human writers who wrote the individual books. It's a mistake to try to separate passages into a divine piece and a human piece. Rather, we should treat the Bible for what it is: divine and human all the way through. Of course God can quote human sinful speech, or describe human sinful actions, without implying that he approves them.

My feeling is that the Supreme Court reached a reasonable standard of protection of speech in the 1960s, a standard higher than any other country in the world, to my knowledge. In brief, speech should be protected up to participation in imminent criminal action.

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.

I did play a dentist in Waiting for Guffman. I wrote the speech at the conference. In the original script, when it got to that scene, it was, 'Thank you very much. Good night.' Literally. I just thought, 'He keeps talking about this speech. The keynote address is the big thing in his life and this is too important to say, "Thank you. Good night." I think we have to see and hear him doing what he does.' So I got together with my dentist and we worked through a few things.

The First Amendment is really at the very core of political speech, and political speech is at the core of the First Amendment. So, we want to be very careful to make sure that candidates for office are free to express their views so that people will make an informed choice. We don't want them holding back, and sort of concealing their views and then disclosing them afterwards.

I wish that Google would realize its own power in the cause of free speech. Google lives and profits by free speech and must use its considerable power to become a better guardian of it.

I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you're allowed to censor it.

If the Government is going to intrude upon the sacred ground of the First Amendment and tell its citizens that their exercise of protected speech could land them in jail, the law imposing such a penalty must clearly define the prohibited speech not only for the potential offender but also for the potential enforcer.

The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.

There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech

Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth.

The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community.

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Deryn felt brilliant, rising through the air at the center off everyone's attention, like an acrobat aloft on a swing. She wanted to make a speech: Hey, all you sods, I can fly and you can't! A natural airman, in case you haven't noticed. And in conclusion, I'd like to add that I'm a girl and you can all get stuffed!

There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.

At least in America, you have freedom of speech, which is a good thing. It's just a question of whether you're allowed to use it on 'Fox News'.

The fundamentals that founded our great nation included the freedom of speech and religion.

I can say across Europe that many principles that have been taken for granted here around free speech, and around civil liberties and an independent judiciary, and fighting corruption, those are principles that, you know, not perfectly but generally, we have tried to apply not just in our own country but also with respect to our foreign policy.

I would rather put up with Rush Limbaugh and live in a country where we all do have freedom of speech.

I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend. But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me.

The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.

The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself: Are my trousers long enough?' Is my veil in place?' Can my make-up be seen?' Are they going to whip me?' No longer asks herself: Where is my freedom of thought?' Where is my freedom of speech?' My life, is it livable?' What's going on in the political prisons?

A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener.

To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people.

Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people's desires.

Curiously enough, the only two plays that I've done very much revision on were the two adaptations - even though the shape of them was pretty much determined by the original work. With my own plays, the only changes, aside from taking a speech out here, putting one in there (if I thought I dwelled on a point a little too long or didn't make it explicit enough), are very minor; but even though they're very minor - having to do with the inability of actors or the unwillingness of the director to go along with me - I've always regretted them.

The threat or fear of violence should not become an excuse or justification for restricting freedom of speech.

Being offended by freedom of speech should never be regarded as a justification for violence.

Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner - the know-nothing fundamentalist right - it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.

I remain optimistic that ultimately free speech and a free press where individuals have access to the dialogue will have a self-correcting quality.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other Who think the same thoughts without need of speech

One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible.

A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.

Courage is the virtue that President Kennedy most admired. He sought out those people who had demonstrated in some way, whether it was on a battlefield or a baseball diamond, in a speech or fighting for a cause, that they had courage that they would stand up, that they could be counted on.

You know, everybody believes in free speech until you start questioning them about it.

Speech is the image of actions

Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.

I went to drama college in England - the Central School of Speech and Drama, in London. I was there for not quite two years, then I got Star Wars.

Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.