"The ability to have a job where you follow your own curiosity every day, there's nothing like that. So few people in the world get to live that way."
Dr. Andrew Huberman
"Creating artificial boundaries on what can and can't be discussed... instead, creating a full spectrum of exploration that can be done and trusting the intelligence of people to do the exploration."
"Religion...is the oldest enemy of our intellectual freedom and our moral autonomy and must be met, and must be challenged, and must be overthrown."
"All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings."
"In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive."
"I think that the only thing that's really missing is...a place where any and all ideas can be explored freely."
"The right to be wrong gives us permission to think, to explore ourselves and figure out where we land on something."
"Intellectual freedom is essential to human society: freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices."
"The moment you stop respecting ideas, even and especially the seemingly stupid or dangerous ones, is the moment you cut yourself off from the world."
"Thinking should be permitted. Thinking should be allowed."
"Win on the facts, win on the arguments, don't silence the expression of the views."
"There is a thought that stops thought, and that thought ought to be stopped."
"The most important thing in life is knowing that you can ask questions that lead to the answers. And we now live in a time where even questions cannot really been asked comfortably about certain topics."
"I really don't care what your opinions are at all, just as long as you're critically evaluating them. That's the important thing to me."
"The woke mind virus... is often anti-meritocratic. You can't question things, even the questioning is bad."
"There is no sacrifice of the Mind required to be religious."
"You can't protect people from ideas. You will end up taking out every good idea in the process."
"Jonathan Rauch's 'Kindly Inquisitors'... understand the basis of how a kind of free knowledge system works."
"You can burn books but you can't kill the ideas in those books."
"It's all about freedom of expression, freedom of thought."
"Women and money are intersecting themes, vital for understanding intellectual freedom."
"Intellectual freedom depends upon material things, and poetry depends upon intellectual freedom."
"Everything should be analyzed and questioned. No topic should be so sacred that we can't shine some light on it."
"I vehemently reject the idea that you can't read someone's work just because you disagree with them."
"The free market of ideas and actually discussing these ideas that apparently nobody really talks about is pivotal."
"You should fear not the people who ask questions. You should fear the people who fear questions."
"Your intellectual and emotional freedom comes from understanding the where's and the whys of this story."
"If you don't understand something or you're not convinced of something, you're not a kafir or a fasiq or a shaitan for asking questions."
"Freedom of debate and conversation should not be canceled. Your freedom to think should not be extinguished."
"Great universities are places where people of all backgrounds holding all beliefs pursuing all questions can come to study and debate their ideas freely and openly."
"It is a part of your own human dignity, it is a part of your intellectual liberation not to put up with this nonsense anymore."
"We want to produce leaders, we want to produce people who dare to think and learn to lead."
"The questions involved legitimate questions that can arise about the limits even of free inquiry under some context when it's decent."
"In a free market of ideas, people can still decide who they listen to, whom they believe, what they want to think for themselves."
"We shouldn't be banning books, we should allow people to read and be challenged and to challenge back."
"The prime purpose of education is to free students from narrow perspectives, limited thinking, and partisanship."
"The closing of the campus mind has become the closing of the American mind." - Dinesh D'Souza
"The precursor to free speech is free thought."
"Let this be a lesson to all you ants. Ideas are very dangerous things."
"It's okay to be in favor of a Marketplace of ideas because that is a progressive idea originally."
"Do you people not see what's at stake here on the slippery slope that we're standing on as we slide into something that is undemocratic, that is anti-intellectual, that is tyrannical?"
"When you conceal knowledge, you only leave room to make slaves out of people."
"Science cannot flourish under conditions that stifle falsification."
"Education has been synonymous with debate, inquiry, challenge. If the universities replace the ideal of rigorous and free intellectual inquiry with safety, they will have lost their reason for being."
"Knowledge is power and if you let them, they will burn your books but they haven't burned any books Ralph."
"Our religion came to free people's intellect, not to blind them."
"We're supposed to be able to question anything."
"Academic freedom is not about 'no', it's about 'why not'."
"Science is free and open inquiry, daring to ask uncomfortable questions."
"Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way."
"I totally agree with the idea about open inquiry."
"The emergence of a free marketplace of ideas challenges existing power structures."
"So should the rest of us be allowed to have those conversations and have those questions?"
"All questions should be allowed to be asked. There is no such thing as a question that can't be asked."
"We're very much about open inquiry and defending open inquiry."
"Your mind is free to think and question and reflect."
"Nobody can tell you what you have to think; that's up to you."
"It's about losing control and then being pissed."
"Knowledge always overruns the systems that think they're in control."
"We should free ourselves and explore sources of knowledge."
"How far are we willing to take guilt by association? If you visit a website, read a book, or attend a meeting, are you permanently tarnished by something someone else wrote or said?"
"In a perfect world, people should be so free to examine all the different potential routes of thought."
"No one should able to tell you what are the things you can think."
"Freedom to think requires the ability to think, to appraise what you're told."
"More than anything... do we give people space to ask questions?"
"If God exists and God is good and powerful, he will not punish someone for using the brain that he gave them."
"He dared to broaden the boundaries of debate."
"The intention to suppress thought and to suppress different points of view never works."
"It's that space to be a thinking human being that we have to keep defending."
"The stifling suppression of debate and open discussion leads to a limiting of our own ability to think."
"Many books that deal with homosexuality or just happen to have elements of it in its story are targeted by misguided parents and hate groups alike."
"Stay vigilant for any censorship efforts in your district, help raise awareness of attempts against intellectual freedom."
"Don't let people bully you into thinking that your question is dumb. Question everything."
"It is quite all right to question everything."
"Free speech is most important in an intellectual setting."
"It's threatening their ability to make art because you know, we've moved from a place where it's about the battle for the battle of ideas to the battle for ideas."
"Freedom of mind, freedom of speech, freedom of thought."
"We have already given up much of our intellectual independence to technology."
"We're intelligent people, why can't we make up our own story?"
"The answer to bad ideas is not silencing those ideas."
"The whole idea of free speech is that you have your thoughts, I have mine."
"The lack of free exchange of ideas worries me."
"It's just knowledge is power and that's what they don't want us to have."
"Freedom of thought, inquiry, discussion, expression... is to intellectual life what oxygen is to biological life."
"In academia, there were once brilliant, non-conformist minds; now, conformity deadens the search for knowledge."
"Challenging the ideology of evolution is liberating."
"Service to others is the rent we pay for a room here on earth."
"No free speech, no free mind, no free society."
"The best disinfectant of Dangerous Ideas is to let people be exposed to them."
"People have a right to be wrong, to take in information, to read whatever they want."
"Certain demographics of people are not even allowed to have an opinion on certain topics and it's like that's anti-intellectual."
"Truth freedom is the power to say that two plus two equals four."
"A God that would judge us for using our brains is probably not a good god."
"Those who learn to think for themselves are the ones who are truly free."
"Many scientific discoveries are owed to those who dared to think outside the box."
"Questioning everything that you were taught to believe is somehow looked upon negatively."
"To be free to speak, even to tell the truth, means you have to be free to be stupid and ignorant and malevolent."
"The work that we're doing would be meaningless if you guys didn't have the bravery and courage to challenge dearly held beliefs."
"The fact that you have to use and I've used that expression many times that I had to give myself permission meant that I was previously restricted from reading a book looking at a website whatever that would be considered apostate."
"The free mind is not a barking dog to be tethered on a ten-foot chain."
"More people should be independent free thinkers."
"You have to believe that your fellow Americans are not idiots."
"We really should be having more conversations about free speech."
"Essentially gave economists permission to think."
"The best weapon against faith-based ideologies and being bounded by world views is questions."
"Your voice matters, your curiosity is not a crime."
"We have to be able to have conversations about anything without allowing our identities to prevent us from being able to think."
"It's a fact that they present a kind of fatal complete where we have this religion hey or you read this book you like that book okay sign on the dotted line now go and follow this and check out your brain for the rest of your life."
"This history of suppressing things that are deemed heretical or deemed to be dangerous ideas... it's not a new idea."
"New York Times writer quits miss barry weiss described the times opinion section as a place where intellectual curiosity had become a liability."
"There's every reason to fear that those who have something to lose in a proper heterodox analysis of the world are conspiring to get rid of voices that they cannot beat on a level playing field."
"A freeing-up of thinking, the exploring of new paths, the shattering of another great silence, new clarity in personal relationships." - Adrienne Rich
"Their design is to keep you in a state of ignorance."
"My trade is to say what I think, and what he thought was always worth saying."
"Aquarius rules consciousness raising through knowledge and information, no matter how much it is being censored."
"My ideas and drive are too important for civilization to be kept locked away."
"We have this promise that we can read anything we want."
"I reserve the right to criticize anything I like." - Christopher Hitchens
"In a world where we feel the threat against ideas and expression, debate is absolutely crucial."
"How in the name of all that's holy have we got the right to say to our people you do not have the intelligence or the wit or the strength to actually discern what is good and what is better? It's wrong."
"The most important thing perhaps was free and open debate and ideas competing with each other so that the best could win."
"Banned books and burning books are the same. Both are done for the same reason: fear of knowledge." - Grace Lynn
"The right to ask questions is never bestowed by some authority. It belongs to everybody."
"Anybody who works or studies in an institution like a university close to the frontiers of knowledge has got to get used to the idea that you are not entitled to be safe intellectually."
"The marketplace of ideas is open to all comers."
"These values come from the enlightenment, the ability to question and dissent from authorities."
"Every one of their intellectual opponents, be it a conservative, a libertarian, an old-school liberal, virtually anyone who doesn't bow to all of their authority is somehow a bigot or a racist or a homophobe or anything else."
"We need that ability to be able to question things."
"Free speech is necessary. I'm not trying to tell you what to think. I'm trying to show you how you can think."
"We need to begin functioning as free thinkers."
"We're in a country here where science has been politicized and where there is intimidation. It prohibits the free exchange of ideas and this bodes very poorly for being able to solve future crises."
"I think the point is to stop us from thinking, to stop us from questioning, to stop us from debating, and to just go along with it."
"If we're going to be free thinkers, we have to be able to be free speakers."
"If you prohibit descent you're going to stunt progress."
"Free thought doesn't need missionaries, doesn't need proselytizing or evangelists, it's just your own thoughts. And that's what free thought is."
"Harvard is supposed to be the center of free thinking."
"Let the science speak. It is somewhat of a liberating feeling."
"If you can be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you can be told what to say or think."
"It is better to have questions that can't be answered rather than to have answers that can't be questioned."
"When you cannot say things, when you cannot debate the ideas, when you cannot disseminate the ideas, the thought also starts to die."
"Freedom of thought is so essential in free and open societies. It's freedom of thought. Once we can access people's thoughts, once we can access people's emotions, we have to create a space that enables people to think freely, to think diversely."
"I refuse to allow this mob idea of intellectual or what's the sorry it's like this the contamination by association that people will tell you you can't talk to this or that kind of person."
"The unrestricted use of man's mind is the solution to the problems of the earth."
"The truth should be able to stand on its own two legs. There should be no problem with having free discourse of ideas."
"Creative thought, creative republics, intellectual discourse depend upon free speech."
"Freedom of thought means the freedom to change your mind."
"The State of Florida, they banned the book, right, because it leads you to have an open mind about things."
"I was completely free in what I inquired into."
"It's a free Marketplace of ideas."
"The demand to restrict technology is the demand to restrict man's mind."
"True education is freedom, creativity, and expansion."
"Freedom of thought is the ultimate luxury."
"The strict divide between academies of learning and unlearning must be actively and ceaselessly undone."
"It was important not just because of the birth of the Protestant Church, but because of the freedom of thought that began to be encouraged."
"Pursue knowledge unencumbered by ideological activism."
"Freedom of thought, such a beautiful thing, isn't it?"
"Once you close down ideas, once you close down speech, once you close down thought, you essentially don't have life."
"Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no lock, no gate, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
"The trench we are all fighting in is defense of the free exchange of ideas, which is put in peril by many kinds of orthodoxies."
"Life is more enjoyable if we stop trying to homogenize everything and stifle our intellectual exploration."
"Universities not only are places where difficult conversations are respected and encouraged, today it sometimes appears that universities may be the only remaining venue where such conversations occur with any regularity."
"I never deny anyone their research."
"AP is animated by a deep respect for the intellectual freedom of teachers and students alike."
"There is Enlightenment when the universal, the free, and the public uses of reason are superimposed on one another."
"Think for yourself, freedom of thought."
"There's a freedom of thought, a freedom of the ability to get things wrong."
"I cannot be limited in my knowledge. I will not be limited in my knowledge."
"We are training free minds... to free us from ignorance, free us from superstition, and free us from all of the self-doubt."
"If you're not free to speak, you're not free to think."
"There was a sort of a release of the freedom of thought; we were actually allowed to think about various different things and test those different things."
"When it was actually allowable to think for yourself, more so, that's when the explosion happened."
"My job is not to make you think what I think; my job is just to make sure you're thinking."
"I think it's impossible to cage, to lock up an idea."