Speech in New York City (28 August 1952)
Context: The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. But there is also, it seems to me, a moment at which democracy must prove its capacity to act. Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal cords.
Speech in New York City (28 August 1952)
“Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.”
Deming Headlight (New Mexico), 6 January 1950, as cited in the Yale Book of Modern Proverbs and at There Are Opinions, And Then There Are Facts; Freakonomics blog post by Fred R. Shapiro http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/18/there-are-opinions-and-then-there-are-facts/ (18 August 2011)
Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety (2000), p. 233
“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.”
“Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.”
The 'Advertisement' to the 1853 edition.
Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831)
“Every man and every living creature has a sacred right to the gladness of springtime.”
Source: Resurrection
Inscription on monument
Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: The question to be tried by you is whether a man has the right to express his honest thought; and for that reason there can be no case of greater importance submitted to a jury. And it may be well enough for me, at the outset, to admit that there could be no case in which I could take a greater — a deeper interest. For my part, I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.
I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips — to make the tongue a convict. I passionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the children of the brain.
A man has a right to work with his hands, to plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who take these rights from their fellow-men.
“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.”
Source: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
