A Quote by Salman Rushdie

People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It's like that. If you're going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.

Salman Rushdie

Quote Topics

Bad Bad Thing Bad Things Badly Defend Free Free Speech Going Good King Ku Klux Klan Like Luther Martin Martin Luther King People Principle Speech Then Things Use Well

Quote Author

Salman Rushdie
Indian - Novelist
Born: June 19, 1947

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.

Salman Rushdie

Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places. Principle #2: Do not defend your property. Principle #3: Respond immediately and escape.

Sam Harris

There is a fundamental principle. People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. That to me is a very basic, elementary, and uncomplicated question.

Norman Finkelstein

I never want to be in a position where I have to defend my material. It's too subjective. It's for other people to defend or not defend.

Sarah Silverman

Clay is so young and has been misled by the wrong people. He might as well have joined the Ku Klux Klan.

Floyd Patterson

Martin Luther King has taken away from the Negro his Gov-given right to defend himself.

Malcolm X

Defend the church. Defend the family. Defend the non-profit community. Defend them against a government that wants to weaken them.

Rick Santorum

We civilians defend our own right to free speech. The military in Iraq does not defend our right to free speech.

Medea Benjamin

I do not have the slightest bit of racism in me. I do not judge people with regards to the colour of their skin, their origin, or their religion. I defend them all, because I defend French people. And, of course, I defend the interests of France, the interests of French people.

Marine Le Pen

The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks.

Salman Rushdie

As I always say, the fundamental thing in football is to defend as well as attack. And to attack well means that the forwards must first help to defend. That's where the work begins.

Pepe

Very often in free speech cases you find yourself defending material that you personally detest, because of course it's no trick to defend the free speech of people you either agree with or who don't particularly upset you. It's when people really upset you that you discover if you believe in free speech or not.

Salman Rushdie

I'm able to defend. A lot of guys don't have that willingness to defend and I think as a guard who's undersized - that's what everybody says; I'm undersized - I'm able to defend and willing to defend and bring that.

Donovan Mitchell

Just as Uncle Tom, back during slavery used to keep the Negroes from resisting the bloodhound or resisting the Ku Klux Klan by teaching them to love their enemies or pray for those who use them despitefully, today Martin Luther King is just a twentieth-century or modern Uncle Tom or religious Uncle Tom, who is doing the same thing today to keep Negroes defenseless in the face of attack that Uncle Tom did on the plantation to keep those Negroes defenseless in the face of the attack of the Klan in that day.

Malcolm X

Defend the Bible? I would as soon defend a lion! Unchain it and it will defend itself.