|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Though all the winds of doctrine were
let loose to play upon the earth, so
truth be in the field, we do
injuriously by licensing and
prohibiting to misdoubt her strength.
Let her and falsehood grapple; who
ever knew truth put to the worse, in a
free and open encounter?" Milton,
Areopagetica
|
|
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice
of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of
increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all
its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." Harry S.
Truman, August
8, 1950
|
|
| "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain
the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -
lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." - Patrick Henry
|
|
"It is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and
groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more
vengeance, more desolation." -General William Tecumseh Sherman
|
| |
"The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in
ideas....The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself
accepted in the competition of the market." -Justice Holmes
|
|
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without
formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the
judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation
of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." - Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943
|
|
"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable." (Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., in Texas v. Johnson )
|
|
"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." (Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in "The One Un-American Act." Nieman Reports, vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 1953, p. 20) )
|
|
