“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

—  Frederick Douglass

A Plea For Free Speech in Boston (10 December 1860), as contained in Words That Changed America https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1461748917, Alex Barnett, Rowman & Littlefield (reprint, 2006), p. 156
1860s

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Frederick Douglass photo
Frederick Douglass 274
American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman 1818–1895

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“Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

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“Hynkel, the dictator, ruled the nation with an iron fist. Under the new emblem of the double cross, liberty was banished, free speech was suppressed and only the voice of Hynkel was heard.”

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The Great Dictator (1940)

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“The speaker must choose a comprehensible [verständlich] expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Habermas (1979) cited in: Werner Ulrich (1983) Critical heuristics of social planning. p. 123

Louis Brandeis photo

“Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 376 (1927).
Judicial opinions

Anthony Kennedy photo

“Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. […] The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it. […] By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) (Opinion of the Court).

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“If I have the right to free speech, it doesn't interfere with your right to free speech. But if I have property, that interferes with your right to have that property”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, The Common Good (1998)
Context: Property rights are not like other rights, contrary to what Madison and a lot of modern political theory says. If I have the right to free speech, it doesn't interfere with your right to free speech. But if I have property, that interferes with your right to have that property, you don't have it, I have it. So the right to property is very different from the right to freedom of speech. This is often put very misleadingly about rights of property; property has no right. But if we just make sense out of this, maybe there is a right to property, one could debate that, but it's very different from other rights.

“We must agree right now that the Bill of Rights takes precedence over everything else and may not be suppressed by a pall of political correctness on campuses, in the media, in corporate life, or anywhere else. There is no right not to be offended by the free expression of others. Those of us who can afford it should sue those who try to deprive us of our freedom of speech. Mine is worth at least ten figures.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Revenge of the Cookie Monster" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle555-20100131-04.html 31 January 2010.

Zechariah Chafee photo

“Speech should be fruitful as well as free.”

Zechariah Chafee (1885–1957) American judicial philosopher and civil libertarian

"Freedom of Speech as I See It Today", Journalism Quarterly, vol. 18 (June 1941), p. 158.

Richard Stallman photo

“The explanation for "free software" is simple — a person who has grasped the idea of "free speech, not free beer" will not get it wrong again.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

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“We are asserting our right to demonstrate, our right to free speech.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

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