A Quote by Liu Xiaobo

Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity, and the mother of truth.

Liu Xiaobo

Quote Topics

Expression Foundation Freedom Freedom Of Expression Human Human Rights Humanity Mother Rights Source Truth

Quote Author

Liu Xiaobo
Chinese - Critic
December 28, 1955 - July 13, 2017

Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.

Liu Xiaobo

I support the rights of all people to practice their religious beliefs privately, but I oppose the idea of respecting religions. In truth, I have no respect for any religion. I believe religion is not compatible with human rights, women's rights, or freedom of expression.

Taslima Nasrin

There was a time when most Americans held to the notion that the only sure and secure foundation for freedom was God - the Source of unalienable rights and the Policeman stationed in every human heart... But apparently, we don't believe in that sort of thing anymore.

Alan Keyes

The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality, basic human rights, freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

Ai Weiwei

Kashmiri people are fighting the war for freedom. And India cannot stop this freedom movement through atrocities, as Kashmir dispute is a problem of humanity, human rights, and freedom.

Shehbaz Sharif

To ask about the 'source' of rights or morals assumes an erreous conclusion. To ask about the source of morals is to assume that such a source exists. As if it existed outside of human constructed systems. The 'source' is the human ability to learn from experience and to entrench rights in our laws and in our consciousness. Our rights come from our long history of wrongs.

Alan Dershowitz

Press freedom is the foundation of the rights of all Filipinos to the truth.

Maria Ressa

Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.

Dick Gregory

I think both freedom of religion and freedom of expression are both fundamental human rights, everyone has not only the freedom and the right but the obligation to say what Pope Francis thinks for the common good... we have the right to have this freedom openly without offending.

Pope Francis

I absolutely believe that America has a responsibility, and the privilege of helping defend freedom and promote the principles that make the world more peaceful. And those principles include human rights, human dignity, free enterprise, freedom of expression, elections.

Mitt Romney

Let's not use the term democracy as a play on words which is what people commonly do, using human rights as a pretext. Those people that really violate human rights [the West] violate human rights from all perspectives. Typically on the subject of human rights regarding the nations from the south and Cuba they say, "They are not democratic societies, they do not respect human rights, and they do not respect freedom of speech".

Alejandro Castro Espin

Our rights are interconnected and inseparable. When freedom of expression is threatened, the rights to freedom of association and assembly, of thought, conscience and religion, are also compromised.

Nazanin Boniadi

The great ideas of the West - rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, thought, and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy- quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization- - remain the best, and perhaps the only, means for all people, no matter of what race or creed, to reach their full potential and live in freedom.

Ibn Warraq

The freedom to share one's insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes.