A Quote by Larry Flynt
Freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like.
Related Quotes
It's always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It's much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent.
The first amendment protects free speech, but if you don't have freedom of thought, do you really have freedom of speech?
Our job isn't to defend freedom of speech, but without freedom of speech we are dead. We can't live in a country without freedom of speech. I prefer to die than live like a rat.
Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.
I prefer a little free speech to no free speech at all; but how many have free speech or the chance or the mind for it; and is not free speech here as elsewhere clamped down on in ratio of its freedom and danger?
In most Western democracies, you do have the freedom of speech. But freedom of speech is not an entitlement to reach. You are free to say what you want, within the confines of hate speech, libel law and so on. But you are not entitled to have your voice artificially amplified by technology.
Antonin Scalia knows that freedom of speech has consequences. And the consequences of freedom of speech are speech you don't like, that you don't want to hear, that you don't want to listen to.
All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.
If you're offended, what the Supreme Court has said the answer to speech you do not like is not less speech, it's more speech. There are many people in America who don't get that.
But I - and I just think it's very - one of the problems of defending the extraordinary principle of freedom of speech is that you have to defend freedom of speech for people like that too.
We want to protect freedom of speech, but it is not unlimited freedom of speech. There has always been rules around defamation, slander and libel, and in Victoria, we have effective rules on racial and religious vilification.
Free speech is important whether you like what's being said or not. The reason why it's so important is that the entire spectrum of ideas needs to be heard so that the best ones are embraced and rise to the top. If you're a liberal and don't like conservative speech and you try to stifle that conservative speech, you need to be prepared for your own progressive speech to be stifled when the power shifts out of your favor.
If a university official's letter accusing a speaker of having a proclivity to commit speech crimes before she's given the speech - which then leads to Facebook postings demanding that Ann Coulter be hurt, a massive riot and a police-ordered cancellation of the speech - is not hate speech, then there is no such thing as hate speech.
You can't be selective about freedom of speech. If you say you believe in freedom of speech you have to acknowledge the people whose views you disagree with, people whose views you may detest, nevertheless have the right to freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right.
To me, freedom of speech and debate are necessary inputs in solving any of our nation's problems, from homelessness and economic inequality to banking, the environment, and national security. Freedom of speech is what Larry Lessig would call a 'root' issue; working on free speech is striking at a root issue.
Related Authors
Al Goldstein Quotes
American
Publisher
Arthur Hays Sulzberger Quotes
American
Publisher
Felix Dennis Quotes
British
Publisher
Hugh Hefner Quotes
American
Publisher
James Thomas Fields Quotes
American
Publisher
Jann Wenner Quotes
American
Publisher
Jeffrey Tucker Quotes
American
Publisher
Jonathan Galassi Quotes
American
Publisher
Joseph Pulitzer Quotes
American
Publisher
Katharine Weymouth Quotes
American
Publisher
Malcolm Forbes Quotes
American
Publisher
Marcus Garvey Quotes
Jamaican
Publisher
Mortimer Zuckerman Quotes
Canadian
Publisher
Porter Stansberry Quotes
American
Publisher
Rupert Murdoch Quotes
American
Publisher
William Randolph Hearst Quotes
American
Publisher