"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason… There can be no right of speech where any man…[is] compelled to suppress his honest sentiments.
Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker."
- Frederick DOUGLASS, "plea for free speech in Boston" 1860

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning."
- Frederick DOUGLASS

"Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate."
- Walter LIPPMANN

"Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought."
- Naguib MAHFOUZ

"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."
- John MILTON

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
- George ORWELL

"Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself."
- Salman RUSHDIE

"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
- Salman RUSHDIE

"In America - as elsewhere - free speech is confined to the dead."
- Mark TWAIN

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
- Voltaire

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
- Walt Whitman

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
- Noam Chomsky

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
- Voltaire

The populist authoritarianism that is the downside of political correctness means that anyone, sometimes it seems like everyone, can proclaim their grief and have it acknowledged. The victim culture, every sufferer grasping for their own Holocaust, ensures that anyone who feels offended can call for moderation, for dilution, and in the end, as is all too often the case, for censorship. And censorship, that by-product of fear - stemming as it does not from some positive agenda, but from the desire to escape our own terrors and superstitions by imposing them on others - must surely be resisted.
- Jonathon Green, "Did You Say 'Offensive?'"