Quotes About Speech

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

Freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like.

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

It's just like when Trump made his speech, his commencement speech at Liberty University, I saw something that I've never seen. ABC News was there, and they're running around asking the parents of students at Liberty University what about Donald Trump they don't like. Are you upset that Trump is here? Do you ever remember any such reporting at an Barack Obama or Michelle Obama commencement? Of course not. And Trump was loved and adored at this thing, and he had some great things to say.

If you have freedom of speech, you have freedom of speech.

Dr. King gave the "I have a dream" speech, not the "I have a plan" speech.

The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth.

You believe in freedom of speech for communists because what they say is true. You do not believe in freedom of speech for fascists because what they say is a lie.

I didn't go off speech on Mexico; I want off speech on virtually everything.

If there were some solitary or feral man, the passions of the soul would be sufficient for him; by them he would be conformed to things in order that he might have knowledge of them. But because man is naturally political and social, there is need for one man to make his conceptions known to others, which is done with speech. So significant speech was needed if men were to live together. Which is why those of different tongues do not easily live together.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

Let there be but two occasions for speech - when the subject is one which you thoroughly know and when it is one on which you are compelled to speak. On these occasions alone is speech better than silence; on all others, it is better to be silent than to speak.

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.

When you're standing in front of an audience like this that is so enthusiastic and so much behind you, it is very hard to give a bad speech. Even a bad speech sounds good in a convention hall like this.

If you have an internet service provider that's capable of slowing down other sites, or putting other sites out of business, or favoring their own friends and affiliates and customers who can pay for fast lanes, that's a horrible infringement on free speech. It's censorship by media monopolies. It's tragic: here we have a technology, the internet, that's capable really of being the town square of democracy, paved with broadband bricks, and we are letting it be taken over by a few gatekeepers. This is a first amendment issue; it's free speech versus corporate censorship.

The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship.

The social consequence of the psychedelic experience is clear thinking -which trickles down as clear speech. Empowered speech.

We civilians defend our own right to free speech. The military in Iraq does not defend our right to free speech.

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.

Events don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.

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

The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history. A writer who writes straight is the architect of history.

National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things.

Abuses of the freedom of speech ought to be repressed, but to whom are we to commit the power of doing it?

If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.

RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau à la financière is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.

Any kind of restrictions put on free speech would have worse consequences than bullying.

Many believe that Hillary Clinton was channeling President Obama during her recent speech in New York City. She focused on equality, justice, and how hard it was for her growing up as a young black man in Hawaii.

Speech is great, but silence is greater.

Alike and ever alike, we are on all continents in the need of love, food, clothing, work, speech, worship, sleep, games, dancing, fun. From tropics to arctics humanity live with these needs so alike, so inexorably alike.

As an American, we have a right to vote and to our freedom of speech, and to voice our political views, and so I actually take conversations on the other side of the aisle not necessarily as a challenge but as an opportunity to continue the conversation, which is I think what we all value most about America.

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.

Most profoundly deaf people have speech that is very difficult to understand.

And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.

The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it is very much better at all costs to hear everyone's account of it, is a theory which has been justified on the whole by experiment, but which remains a very daring and even a very surprising theory. It is really one of the great discoveries of the modern time.

Poetry is one of the most fugitive arts: it can be assigned to memory, taken and hidden in the mind, smuggled into smoky cabin back rooms, recited there and then conveyed only by speech to another person. It is therefore the most likely to survive colonization.

O Holy Spirit of God, abide with us; inspire all our thoughts; pervade our imaginations; suggest all our decisions; order all our doings. Be with us in our silence and in our speech, in our haste and in our leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give us grace at all times humbly to rejoice in Thy mysterious companionship.

The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream.

I caution anyone who in their protest becomes the very thing that they're protesting against. Meaning turning to hateful speech, violating principles and ideals that are sacred in America. We need to raise our voices, but we do not need to indulge in hate.

Reason and speech we onely bring.

Aggressive civil disobedience should be confined to a vindication of the right of free speech and free association.

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.

The cold, increased by the tremendous speed, deprived them of the power of speech.

Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.

The biblical authors wrote of God's sovereignty over His world, and of man's experiences within that world, using such modes of speech about the natural order and human experience as were current in their days, and in a language that was common to themselves and their contemporaries. This is saying no more than that they wrote to be understood. Their picture of the world and things in it is not put forward as normative for later science, andy more than their use of Hebrew and Greek is put forward as a perfect model for composition in these languages.

I'd done some acting in high school. Then I went to Kenyon College and got thrown in jail and kicked off the football team. Since I was determined not to study very much, I majored in theater the last two years. Got my degree in speech; they didn't actually have a degree in theater. I graduated at two o'clock in the afternoon, and at three-thirty I was on the train for Williams Bay, Wisconsin, for summer stock, and then I did winter stock.

It's not about contraception. It's about economic liberty, it's about freedom of speech, it's about freedom of religion, it's about government control of your lives and it's got to stop!

A presidential speech is always the work of many hands.