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FREE
FREE PRESS --- FREE SPEECH
FREE TRADE --- FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

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FREE

see: "FREEDOM" for related links


They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and
white contradiction in two words — 'free-love' — as if a
love ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature
of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely
paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his
word.
--G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874—1936)
English essayist, novelist, and poet.
_The Defendant_ "A Defence of Rash Vows" [1902]

Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow.
--George Clinton (b. 1941)
American rhythm and blues musician.
Title of 1971 song.

The moon belongs to ev'ryone,
The best things in life are free.
--B.G. DeSylva (1895—1950)
American songwriter.
"The Best Things in Life Are Free" [1927 song]
Coauthored with Lew Brown and Ray Henderson.

I am free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
--John Dryden (1631—1700)
English poet, critic, and dramatist.
_The Conquest of Granada_, pt. I, act I, sc. i [1669-1670]

The Best Things in Life Are Free.
--Howard E. Johnson (1887-1941)
American songwriter.
[Title of 1917 song written with John Aloysues Tucker.]

I am a free man, an American, a United States
Senator, and a Democrat, in that order.
--Lyndon B. Johnson (1908—1973)
American Democratic statesman, President [1963—1969].
_Texas Quarterly_ [Winter 1958]

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
--Dwight Morrow (1873—1931)
American lawyer, banker, and diplomat.
"San Francisco News" [1 June 1949]

It's terrible to lie in chains,
To rot in dungeon deep,
But it's still worse, when you are free
To sleep, and sleep, and sleep
--Taras Shevchenko (1814—1861)
Ukranian poet.
"The Days Go By", l. 21 [21 December 1845]

As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes
but little difference whether you are committed to a farm
or the county jail.
--Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862)
American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher.
_Walden_ [1854]

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and
that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not
take lightly the perils of war.
--Thucydides (c.460—c.400 B.C.)
Greek historian of Athens.
_History of the Peloponnesian War_ "Pericles' Funeral Oration"

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manumit (verb) ['mζn-yu-mit]
To release from slavery or other unpleasant situation.



FREE PRESS

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see: "JOURNALISM" for related links
see: "FREEDOM" for related links


Debate on public issues should be uninhibited,
robust, and wide-open, and that . . . may well
include vehement, caustic, and sometimes
unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and
public officials.
--William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (1906—1997)
American jurist; associate justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court [1956-1990].
In "The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan" [1964].

A free press can of course be good or bad, but,
most certainly, without freedom it will never be
anything but bad . . . . Freedom is nothing else
but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement
is a certainty of the worse.
--Albert Camus (1913—1960)
French novelist, dramatist, and essayist who won
the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature.
_Resistance, Rebellion, and Death_ [1960]

There are some things the general public does not need
to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes
when the government can take legitimate steps to keep
its secrets and when the press can decide whether to
print what it knows.
--Katharine Graham (1917—2001)
American publisher.
Remarks at CIA, Langley, Virginia [16 November 1988].

Wherever books are burned, sooner
or later men also are burned.
--Heinrich Heine (1797—1856)
German poet.
"Almansor" [1823]

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... Today the press is still legally free; but most of the little papers have
disappeared. The cost of wood-pulp, of modern printing machinery and
of syndicated news is too high for the Little Man. In the totalitarian East
there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are
controlled by the state. In the democratic West there is economic
censorship and the media of mass communication are controlled by
members of the Power Elite. Censorship by rising costs and the
concentration of communication power in the hands of a few big
concerns is less objectionable than State ownership and government
propaganda; but certainly it is not something of which a Jeffersonian
democrat could possibly approve.

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and
a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be
true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened,
above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of
a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither
with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally
irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost
infinite appetite for distractions.

...Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are
constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves
effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members
spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and
in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other
worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy,
will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would
manipulate and control it.

In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most part on repetition,
suppression and rationalization — the repetition of catchwords which
they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression of facts which they
wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationalization of passions which
may be used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art and
science of manipulation come to be better understood, the dictators
of the future will doubtless learn to combine these techniques with
the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to
drown in a sea of irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to
the maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of democratic
institutions.

--Aldous Huxley (1894—1963)
English novelist (grandson of T.H. Huxley.)
_Brave New World Revisited_ [1958], ch. 4 "Propaganda in a Democratic Society"

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Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press,
and that cannot be limited without being lost.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to Dr. James Currie [28 January 1786].


No government ought to be without censors;
and where the press is free, no [government]
ever will.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to George Washington [9 September 1792].


Where the press is free and every
man able to read, all is safe.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to Col. Charles Yancey [6 January 1816], in Andrew Adgate Lipscomb
and Albert Ellery Bergh (eds.) _The Writings of Thomas Jefferson_ [1905].

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Freedom of the press is guaranteed
only to those who own one.
--A. J. Liebling (1904—1963)
American syndicated newspaper columnist, author, and
staff writer for the New Yorker from 1935 until his death in 1963.
During World War II, he served as a correspondent for
the magazine in France, England, and North Africa.
"Do You Belong in Journalism?" in the _New Yorker_ [14 May 1960].

If the newspapers of a country are filled with good
news, the jails will be filled with good people.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927—2003)
American scholar and politician.
Quoted in "The Illustrated Weekly of India" [16-22 October 1988].

The press of Italy is free, freer than the press of any
other country, so long as it supports the regime.
--Benito Mussolini (1883—1945)
Italian Fascist dictator.
In George Seldes _Sawdust Caesar_, ch. 27 [1935].

I shall never tolerate the newspapers to say or do anything
against my interests; they may publish a few little articles
with just a little poison in them, but one fine morning
somebody will shut their mouths.
--Napoleon I (1769—1821)
Emperor of France [1804—1815].
Letter to his minister of police Joseph Fouchι [22 April 1805],
in _The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection from His
Written and Spoken Words_ ed. J. Christopher Herold [1955].

In Czechoslovakia there is no such thing as freedom of the
press. In the United States there is no such thing as freedom
from the press.
--Martina Navratilova (b. 1957)
Czech-born American tennis player.
Quoted in Lee Green _Sportswit_ [1984].

Freedom of speech and press ... does not protect
disturbances of the public peace or the attempt
to subvert the government. It does not protect
publications or teachings which tend to subvert
or imperil the government, or to impede or
hinder it in the performance of its governmental
duties.
--Edward Terry Sanford (1865—1930)
Associate justice of the United States Supreme Court [1923—1930].
In a Supreme Court decision "Gitlow v. the People of New York" [1925].

The rock-bottom foundation of a free press
is the integrity of the people who run it.
--Adlai E. Stevenson (1900—1965)
American Democratic politician.
Speech to journalists, Portland, Oregon [8 September 1952].

Junk journalism is the evidence of a society
that has got at least one thing right, that
there should be nobody with the power to
dictate where responsible journalism begins.
--Tom Stoppard [Tomas Straussler] (b. 1937)
Czech-born British playwright.
"Night and Day" (1978)

In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits which
the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary
to submit to the inevitable evils that it engenders.
--Alexis de Tocqueville (1805—1859)
French historian and politician.
_Democracy in America_, part I, ch. 11 [1835]

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imprimatur [im-prih-MAH-tur; -MAY-], noun:
1. Official license or approval to print or publish a book,
paper, etc.; especially, such a license issued by the Roman
Catholic episcopal authority.
2. Approval; sanction.
3. A mark of approval or distinction.




FREE SPEECH

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see: "FREEDOM" for related links


Now a man talks frankly only with his wife,
at night, with the blanket over his head.
--Isaac Babel (1894—1940)
Russian short-story writer.
Remark, c.1937, in Solomon Volkov _St Petersburg_ [1996].

Free speech is to a great people what winds are
to oceans and malarial regions, which waft away
the elements of disease, and bring new elements
of health. Where free speech is stopped miasma
is bred, and death comes fast.
--Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887)
American Congregational minister;
[brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher].
_Royal Truths_ [1866]

An unconditional right to say what one pleases about
public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum
guarantee of the First Amendment.
--Hugo La Fayette Black (1886—1971)
America lawyer, politician, and associate
justice of the Supreme Court [1937—1971].
In "New York Times v. Sullivan" [1964].

As I told my friends, the attempt to punish someone
because of speech or thought is abhorrent whoever
applies it. It is even _more_ destructive, however,
when it is done by the political wing that presents
itself as the protector of free speech and personal
liberty. It's one thing when the wolf comes to the
door; it's quite another when that wolf is disguised
as your grandmother. And if you have any doubt
about who controls our culture today, consider that
Larry Flynt thrives while Dr. Laura Schlessinger
struggles.
--former Los Angeles NOW president Tammy Bruce,
_The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault
on Free Speech and Free Minds_ [2001]

It is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never
be hindered from thinking whatever he chooses so long as he
conceals what he thinks. The working of his mind is limited
only by the bounds of his experience and the power of his
imagination. But this natural liberty of private thinking is of
little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker
himself, if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughts to
others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbors.
Moreover it is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have
any power over the mind. If a man's thinking leads him to call
in question ideas and customs which regulate the behavior of
those about him, to reject beliefs which they hold, to see better
ways of life than those they follow, it is almost impossible for
him, if he is convinced of the truth of his own reasoning, not
to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitude that he
is different from them and does not share their opinions. Some
have preferred, like Socrates, some would prefer today, to face
death rather than conceal their thoughts. Thus freedom of
thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech.
--J. B. [John Bagnell] Bury (1861—1927)
American historian, classical scholar, and philologist.
_A History of Freedom of Thought_, ch. 1 [1913]

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable
condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
--Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870—1938)
American jurist and associate justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court [1932—1938].
Quoted in _Illinois Bar Journal_ [1964].

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Intemperate speech is a distinctive characteristic of man. Hotheads blow
off and release destructive energy in the process. They shout and rave,
exaggerating weaknesses, magnifying error, viewing with alarm. So it
has been from the beginning; and so it will be throughout time. The
framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They
too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence
of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions
for the restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty.
They chose liberty.
--William O. Douglas (1898—1980)
American Supreme Court Associate Justice [1939—1975].
Dissenting opinion in "Beauharnais v. Illinois," 343 U.S. 250 [1952].


Thus, if the First Amendment means anything in
the field, it must allow protests even against the
moral code that the standard of the day sets for
the community. In other words, literature should
not be suppressed merely because it offends the
moral code of the censor.
--William O. Douglas (1898—1980)
American Supreme Court Associate Justice [1939—1975].
Opinion, _Roth v. U.S._, 354 U.S. 476 [1957].


Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most
dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American
act that could most easily defeat us.
--William O. Douglas (1898—1980)
American Supreme Court Associate Justice [1939-1975].
Quoted in Nat Hentoff _Living the Bill of Rights_, p. 16 [1999].

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Who dares not speak his free thoughts is a slave.
--Euripides (485?—406 B.C.)
Greek dramatist.
_The Phoenician Virgins_

The First Amendment was designed to protect
offensive speech, because nobody ever tries to
ban the other kind.
--Mike Godwin (b. 1956)
American lawyer and author.
Quoted in "Time" (mag.) [1995].

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First as to speech. That privilege rests upon the premise that there
is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that it may not be
lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated. It needs to rest
upon the further premise that there are no propositions that are
not open to doubt; it is enough, even if there are, that in the end
it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
Hence it has been again and again unconditionally proclaimed
that there are no limits to the privilege so far as words seek to
affect only the hearers' beliefs and not their conduct. The trouble
is that conduct is almost always based upon some belief, and
that to change the hearer's belief will generally to some extent
change his conduct, and may even evoke conduct that the law
forbids.
--Learned Hand (1872—1961)
American judge.
"The Spirit of Liberty", speech in New York, N.Y. [21 May 1944].


For myself I had rather take my chance that some
traitors will escape detection than spread abroad
a spirit of general superstition and distrust. ... I
believe that that community is already in process
of dissolution where each man begins to eye his
neighbor as a possible enemy, where nonconformity
with the accepted creed, political as well as religious,
is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without
specification or backing, takes the place of evidence;
where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where
faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become
so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the
open lists, to win or lose.
--Learned Hand (1872—1961)
American judge.
"A Plea for the Open Mind and Free Discussion"
Speech in Albany, N.Y. [24 October 1952].

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The most stringent protection of free speech would not
protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and
causing a panic. . . . The question in every case is whether
the words used are used in such circumstances and are of
such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that
they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress
has a right to prevent.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841—1935)
Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher.
In a Supreme Court opinion, "Schenck v. United States" [1919].


When a nation is at war many things that might
be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to
its effort that their utterance will not be endured
so long as men fight and no court could regard
them as protected by any constitutional right.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841—1935)
Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher.
In a Supreme Court opinion, "Schenck v. United States" [1919].

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The right to be heard does not automatically
include the right to be taken seriously.
--Hubert H. Humphrey (1911—1978)
38th vice-president of the United States [1965—1969]
and liberal senator [1949—1965] & [1971—1978].
Speech before the National Student Association,
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin [23 August 1965].

The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the
press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a
good deal of rubbish.
--Robert H. Jackson (1892—1954)
American Supreme Court Justice [1941—1954]
Chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
Dissenting in, "United States v. Ballard" [1944].

For God's sake, let us freely hear both sides!
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to Nicholas G. Dufief [19 April 1814].

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth,
and every other man has a right to knock him down
for it. Martyrdom is the test.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.
In James Boswell _Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791].

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with
unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and
competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its
people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market
is a nation that is afraid of its people.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917—1963)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1961—1963].
On the twentieth anniversary of the Voice of America [26 February 1962].

The author of the Satanic Verses book [Salman Rushdie],
which is against all Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran,
and all those involved in its publication who were aware
of its content, are sentenced to death. I ask all Moslems
to execute them wherever they find them.
--Ruhollah Khomeini (1900?—1989)
Iranian Shiite cleric who led the revolution that
overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979.
Fatwa issued 14 February 1989.

People demand freedom of speech to make up
for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
--Sφren Kierkegaard (1813—1855)
Danish philosopher.
Attributed in Laurence J. Peter _Peter's People_ [1979].

If there is a dividing line between liberty and license, it is where
freedom of speech is no longer respected as a procedure of the
truth and becomes the unrestricted right to exploit the ignorance,
and to excite the passions, of the people. Then freedom is such
a hullabaloo of sophistry, propaganda, special pleading, lobbying,
and salesmanship that it is difficult to remember why freedom
of speech is worth the pain and trouble of defending it.
--Walter Lippmann (1889—1974)
American journalist.
_The Public Philosophy_ [1955]

I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by
now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am
unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free
speech, whatever the excuse.
--H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.
In Guy J. Forgue (ed.) _Letters of H. L. Mencken_ [1961].

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If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one
person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no
more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he
had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
--John Stuart Mill (1806—1873)
English philosopher and social reformer.
_On Liberty_, ch. 2 [1859]


To refuse a hearing to an opinion because they
are sure that it is false, is to assume that *their*
certainty is the same thing as *absolute* certainty.
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of
infallibility.
--John Stuart Mill (1806—1873)
English philosopher and social reformer.
_On Liberty_, ch. 2 [1859]

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Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue
freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
--John Milton (1608—1674)
English poet.
_Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_ [1644]

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"The Sounds of Silencing"
By Peggy Noonan
October 14, 2006
_The Wall Street Journal_

... At Columbia University, members of the Minutemen, the group that
patrols the U.S. border with Mexico and reports illegal crossings, were
asked to address a forum on immigration policy. As Jim Gilchrist, the
founder, spoke, angry students stormed the stage, shouting and knocking
over chairs and tables. "Having wreaked havoc," said the New York Sun,
they unfurled a banner in Arabic and English that said, "No one is ever
illegal." The auditorium was cleared, the Minutemen silenced. Afterward
a student protester told the Columbia Spectator, "I don't feel we need
to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech. ...
The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration." ...

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If liberty means anything at all, it means the right
to tell people what they do not want to hear.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950)
English novelist.
Introduction to "Animal Farm" [1945].

Free speech, exercised both individually and through a
free press, is a necessity in any country where people
are themselves free.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
"Sedition, a Free Press, and Personal Rule"
Editorial in the _Kansas City Star_ [7 May 1918].

The price of liberty is, in addition to eternal vigilance,
eternal patience with the vacuous blather occasionally
expressed from behind the shield of free speech.
--Michael Shermer,
in "Scientific American" [June 2001].

There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom
than the familiar statement: In a free country, we punish men
for crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have.
--Harry S. Truman (1884—1972)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1945—1953].
Quoted in David Fellman _Defendants Rights Today_, p. 83 [1979].

I disapprove of what you say, but will
defend to the death your right to say it.
-Voltaire, attributed; this paraphrase of Voltaire's philosophy appears
in a biography by Evelyn Beatrice Hall (S. G. Tallentyre, pseudonym),
and is often attributed directly to Voltaire - see Ralph Keyes, "Nice
Guys Finish Seventh" [1992].



Click picture to ZOOM
FREE TRADE

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see: "CAPITALISM" for related links
see: "POLITICS" for related links


Nothing can be more surely established than
that a Government which interferes with any
trade injures that trade.
--Walter Bagehot (1826—1877)
British economist and essayist.
_Lombard Street_, ch. 4 [1873]

[Social legislation] raised the cost of production;
and what can be more illogical than to raise the
cost of production in the country and then to
allow the products of other countries which are
not surrounded by any similar legislation, which
are free from any similar cost and expenditure
— freely to enter our country in competition with
our own goods . . . If these foreign goods come
in cheaper, one of two things must follow . . .
either you will take lower wages or you will
lose your work.
--Joseph Chamberlain (1836—1914)
British businessman, social reformer, and politician; (father of Neville Chamberlain.)
In Alan Sykes _Tariff Reform in British Politics 1903-1913_ [1979].

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will
see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled
America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace
and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_Journal_ [31 December 1844]

I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, "Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"
And he went for that heathen Chinee.
--[Francis] Bret Harte (1836—1902)
American author.
"Plain Language from Truthful James"

A correspondent from Hamburg, speaking of the invasion of American
trade, says: "Incidentally, it may be remarked that the typewriting
machine with which this article is written, as well as the thousands
— nay, hundreds of thousands — of others that are in use throughout
the world, were made in America; that it stands on an American table,
in an office furnished with American desks, bookcases, and chairs,
which cannot be made in Europe of equal quality, so practical and
convenient, for a similar price."
--Jack London [John Griffith Chaney] (1876—1916)
American novelist and short-story writer.
_The War of Classes_ [1905]

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government
can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
--Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800—1859)
English politician and historian.
_Essay on Mitford's History of Greece_ [1824]

If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and
you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an
hour for labor, [. . . ] have no environmental controls, no
pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about
anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound
going south.
--Ross Perot (b. 1930)
American businessman, philanthropist, and independent
candidate for U.S. president in 1992 and 1996.
Presidential debate [15 October 1992].

-

Formerly our commerce and industry were the
best in the world, since not only did we make the
goods of which Spain had need, but we also
produced merchandise for the whole of Europe
and the Indies. Today it is these foreigners who
bring their merchandise, especially their cloths,
to Spain, and in exchange take away a full
measure of hard cash.
--Petition of the merchant guild of Toledo [1618], in M.J. Cohan
and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, pp. 339-40 [2004].



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

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see: "THINKING"
see: "FREEDOM" for other related links


It is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never
be hindered from thinking whatever he chooses so long as he
conceals what he thinks. The working of his mind is limited
only by the bounds of his experience and the power of his
imagination. But this natural liberty of private thinking is of
little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker
himself, if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughts to
others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbors.
Moreover it is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have
any power over the mind. If a man's thinking leads him to call
in question ideas and customs which regulate the behavior of
those about him, to reject beliefs which they hold, to see better
ways of life than those they follow, it is almost impossible for
him, if he is convinced of the truth of his own reasoning, not
to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitude that he
is different from them and does not share their opinions. Some
have preferred, like Socrates, some would prefer today, to face
death rather than conceal their thoughts. Thus freedom of
thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech.
--J. B. [John Bagnell] Bury (1861—1927)
American historian, classical scholar, and philologist.
_A History of Freedom of Thought_, ch. 1 [1913]

Some who are too scrupulous to steal your possessions
nevertheless see no wrong in tampering with your thoughts.
--Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931)
Lebanese poet.
In Anthony Ferris (ed. & trans.) _Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran_ [1963].

If there is any principle of the Constitution that most
imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is
the principle of free thought — not free thought for
those who agree with us but freedom for the thought
we hate.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841—1935)
Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher.
Dissenting opinion in "United States v. Schwimmer" [1929].

The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional
right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright
of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it. It is not the function of
our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the
function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.
--Robert H. Jackson (1892—1954)
American Supreme Court Justice [1941—1954]
Chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
Opinion, "American Communications Association v. Douds", 339 U.S. 382 [1950]


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