“Men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.”

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

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H.L. Mencken281

American journalist and writer 1880–1956

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

“There's no fine line between "free speech" and "hate speech": Free speech is hate speech; it's for the speech you hate – and for all your speech that the other guy hates. If you don't have free speech, then you can't have an honest discussion.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

"Stay Quiet and You'll Be Okay" http://www.steynonline.com/6943/stay-quiet-and-youll-be-okay steynonline.com (9 May 2015)

“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

“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) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

"The One Un-American Act," Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952) http://ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/foryoungpeople/theoneunamerican/oneunamerican.cfm <br class="br">Other speeches and writings

“Most men make little other use of their Speech than to give evidence against their own Understanding.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

“A threat to free speech. It was marvelous how they accepted the principles of democracy and rejected them at the same time by talk of mob action!”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The Winds of Limbo aka The Fireclown (1965), Chapter 4 (p. 151)

“Successive governments have refused to accept the threat posed to our society by Islamic fundamentalism and extremism and to take the necessary measures to meet it head-on. We should esteem our own values of freedom, free speech and liberal secular democracy and start defending them.”

Gerard Batten (1954) British politician

Islamic fundamentalism is incompatible with freedom and Western liberal democracy https://web.archive.org/web/20070927174923/http://www.tfa.net/pdfs/60610.pdf (2006) <br class="br">2006

“The problem of free speech in, both in society in general and on campus in particular, is everyone will say "I believe in free speech, but." The problem is everyone has a different "But!" exemption that they would put on free speech. So the issue really becomes, who has the power to enforce their exemptions to free speech while keeping absolute free speech for themselves?”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Who's too Weak to Live with Freedom? (2013)

“It is proposed that a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today. Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Collaborations with others, Science Order, and Creativity (1987)

“There can be no free speech in a mob: free speech is one thing a mob can't stand.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence

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