A Quote by Tony Hendra
Satire dramatizes better than any other use of it, the inherent contradiction of free speech that it functions best when what is being said is at its most outrageous.
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.
I wish that Google would realize its own power in the cause of free speech. The debate has been often held about Google's role in acceding to the Chinese government's demands to censor search results. Google says that it is better to have a hampered internet than no internet at all. I believe that if the Chinese people were threatened with no Google, they might even rise up and demand free speech - free search and links - from their regime. Google lives and profits by free speech and must use its considerable power to become a better guardian of it.
Without free speech no search for Truth is possible; without free speech no discovery of Truth is useful; without free speech progress is checked, and the nations no longer march forward towards the nobler life which the future holds for man. Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day; but the denial stays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.
The radicals...want speech regulated by codes that proscribe certain language. They see free speech as at best a delusion, at worst a threat to the welfare of minorities and women....The most obvious (and cynical) explanation for the switched positions is the switched situations. Protesting students became established professors and administrators. For outsiders, free speech is bread and butter; for insiders, indigestion. To the new academics, unregulated free speech spells trouble.
I know a whole generation has been raised on the notion of multiculturalism; that all civilizations are just different. No! Not always. Sometimes things are better! Rule of law is better than autocracy and theocracy; equality of the sexes, better; protection of minorities, better; free speech, better; free elections, better; free appliances with large purchases, better! Don't get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance.
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.
Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much; yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirized can join in the satire.
Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech.
Advocates of 'free speech' often repeat the mantra that the best response to bad speech is more and better speech, not the suppression of the bad stuff.
I wish that Google would realize its own power in the cause of free speech. Google lives and profits by free speech and must use its considerable power to become a better guardian of it.
The best society, the best human existence, arrives when humans most closely determine the truth, and act on the truth, and separate it from superstition, falsity, or misinformation. And there is no better system for determining the truth than free speech: Testing the validity of an idea in the waters of public discussion and debate.
In the United States, unlike any other advanced democracy, money really talks. Our Supreme Court has said that spending money on politicians is a form of free speech. No other court has said that.
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?
My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.
That always seemed the coolest thing to me. How do you use num'bers to predict things? It was like a cool way to use numbers to be better than other people. And I really liked being better than other people.
Satire must always accompany any free society. It is an absolute necessity. Even in the most repressive medieval kingdoms, they understood the need for the court jester, the one soul allowed to tell the truth through laughter. It is, in many ways, the most powerful form of free speech because it is aimed at those in power, or those whose ideas would spread hate. It is the canary in the coalmine, a cultural thermometer, and it always has to push, push, push the boundaries of society to see how much it’s grown.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer