A Quote by Alan Dershowitz

Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.

Alan Dershowitz

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Blunt Censorship Dangerous Easily Instruments Laws Merely Once Only Scalpels Sharp Speech Unpopular

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Alan Dershowitz
American - Lawyer
Born: September 1, 1938

A blunt blade is more dangerous than a sharp one

Ray Mears

I want judges on the Supreme Court who will respect the words and the meaning of the Constitution, the laws enacted by Congress and the laws enacted by state legislatures.

John Cornyn

Some tools of thought are so blunt that they are almost useless; others are so sharp that they are dangerous. But the wise man will have the use of both kinds.

Gregory Bateson

Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

Neal Boortz

Censorship' is a term pertaining only to governmental action. No private action is censorship. No private individual or agency can silence a man or suppress a publication; only the government can do so. The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right not to agree, not to listen and not to finance one's own antagonists.

Ayn Rand

Men like M. de Talleyrand are like sharp instruments with which it is dangerous to play.

Klemens von Metternich

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.

Joichi Ito

If you have to make an unpopular speech, give it all the sincerity you can muster; that's the only way to sweeten it.

Jean Francois Paul de Gondi

Overall there may be less censorship in America than in China, but censorship and self-censorship are not only from political pressure, but also pressures from other places in a society.

Yiyun Li

The 112th Congress passed only 220 laws, the lowest number enacted by any Congress. In 1948, when President Truman called the 80th Congress a 'Do-Nothing' Congress, it had passed more than 900 laws.

Juan Williams

The solution to voters potentially being misled by a judicial candidate's political speech is more speech - not government censorship.

Amul Thapar

Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.

Erica Jong

The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in. Thus in practice, every liberation increases the sense of oppression. Nor is the paradox merely in the mind: the laws enacted to secure the rights of every person and group, by creating protective boundaries, create new barriers.

Jacques Barzun

Our ideas are only intellectual instruments which we use to break into phenomena; we must change them when they have served their purpose, as we change a blunt lancet that we have used long enough.

Claude Bernard

In liberal society we claim that freedom of speech is sacred and therefore has an absolute character. But we know (or should know) that "free speech" inhabits a structured space: not only is "hate speech" legally forbidden in liberal societies, but there are also laws protecting the circulation of copyrighted material, and the reproduction of trademarks and patents without explicit permission.

Talal Asad

Sex as something beautiful may soon disappear. Once it was a knife so finely honed the edge was invisible until it was touched and then it cut deep. Now it is so blunt that it merely bruises and leaves ugly marks.

Mary Astor

A Quote by Alan Dershowitz

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