"We should not censor books just because we disagree with some of the ideas in them. It's better for controversial topics to be openly discussed and debated rather than suppressed."
"They are at minimum a bastion of the free speech that is becoming increasingly difficult to come by in our society."
"Your voice matters, and your curiosity is not a crime, even if some people would like to make you think otherwise."
"Debate on matters of public interest should be robust, uninhibited, and wide open."
"This is the type of free speech that we hope for."
"Free speech is meaningless unless you allow people you don't like to say things you don't like."
"The conversation right now is so much around censoring people for saying things about COVID or Russia or Ukraine, and we sort of gloss over what is actually dangerous to say online."
"This is where we can engage in free and open dialogue, in the spirit of seeking truth."
"You have to have a right to dissent that is way more powerful than muzzling free speech."
"When anyone can say anything online and potentially reach millions, and when that speech increasingly coincides with violent threats and attacks against marginalized groups, we must question the boundaries of free speech."
"Protecting free speech is protecting the mechanism by which societies stay stabilized and dynamic."
"The fundamental principle of being able to freely and openly discuss our values shouldn't be up for negotiation."
"It's an extraordinary day for journalism, it's an extraordinary day for free speech."
"In today's environment, the conversation around free speech and content moderation is essential for the health of our democracy."
"I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight, and trans, who are standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society."
"I believe in the importance of markets, I believe in the primacy of free speech and individual rights."
"A country without free speech is not a democracy. Free speech is a prerequisite to democracy."
"Free speech is the main right that you have without it you have no others."
"You need free speech... without that, we do not have a problem-solving mechanism."
"If outrageous opinions are read aloud, they could be challenged and exposed for what they are; if they're silenced, the person holding these views can become a martyr."
"If outrageous opinions are read aloud, they can be challenged and exposed for what they are. If they're silenced, the person holding these views can become a martyr."
"Free speech isn't just another right; it's the mechanism by which people of different opinions talk instead of strangling each other."
"It's actually dead simple to provide a left-wing rationale for free speech. It should be self-evident to people who are pursuing social justice that the most potent weapon in their artillery is the ability to communicate. What are people who lack power have other than their ability to speak on their own behalf?"
"Free speech until the FBI comes and sits in your office, Mr. Zuckerberg, and tells you what you can and cannot publish on your platform."
"Hey Mischief, we salute you. Thank you for fighting for free speech."
"Parody and free speech are one of the areas of Supreme Court expression that I'm most interested in."
"The solution to speech that you don't agree with, the solution to speech that you find repulsive, isn't suppression; it's more free speech."
"The ability to speak freely, hate speech is not a qualifier. It's not a real thing."
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you get to say things and then people aren't allowed to say anything about what you just said."
"Critique and review are protected by US fair use doctrine and rightfully so. The idea that you could use copyright law as a spear to attack those who are criticizing you is an affront to free speech and freedom of the press."
"The day he decided to buy Twitter and make it a free speech platform, he has been Public Enemy Number Two after former president Donald Trump."
"Free expression like free speech is a human right. You need that for any kind of society that's going to push back on anything."
"Free speech platforms are essential for a healthy democracy, allowing for a multitude of voices to be heard."
"Free speech allows all to explore and debate openly the issues most important to us, our families, and of course the British people."
"I do believe that all things considered, free speech is a lesser evil than constrained speech."
"Free speech should serve the truth. If you're going to engage in free speech, you have a responsibility, a corresponding responsibility, which is to say what you believe to be true."
"Patriotism means being able to stand up and speak out on an issue... If I disagree with the president of the United States on an issue, that I can speak out about that, and I'll fight for that cause."
"We must allow free inquiry and we can't have a handful of billionaire oligarchs telling us what we can or can't say."
"I prefer to live in a society where people are allowed to say things I don't like than a society in which they're not."
"Free speech is only valuable socially if it is meaningful and if it helps us arrive at moral and truthful positions."
"People need a place where they can explore an idea or thought without feeling like somebody's going to jump down their throat just for entertaining that idea."
"I am a free speech zealot myself. I believe that's part of what it means to be American."
"What free speech is, is the right and maybe the obligation to conduct discourse in a manner that's aimed at addressing and solving serious problems."
"Free speech really is this fundamental principle of democracy and it's been decaying."
"The only solution to speech you don't like is more speech."
"If Elon makes free speech cool again and figures out a way to make that a principle that everybody can embrace... that's enormous."
"Freedom of speech is not only necessary in order to produce new inventions and innovations but also to produce new ideas."
"We need freedom of speech. We need to preserve freedom of speech."
"Speaking out generally against the government or protesting against corporate activity... is absolutely open and free speech."
"I did this deal because not only do I believe in free speech, but I believed that this was the best possible chance for the work that I'm doing to reach the largest amount of people."
"If they're looking to silence me, it means I'm saying something truthful and something they don't want people to hear."
"One of the things that many of us on the right are pushing for is less regulation specifically because we want more speech on these platforms, not less speech."
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
"The antidote to speech we don't like is more speech. It's not shouting people down. It's not talking louder. It's engaging in meaningful conversations when we have disagreements."
"We're all in agreement on certain aspects: free speech, civilized discourse on the most important matters, and much more."
"We already have laws about slander and threats of violence. We don't need a billionaire in Silicon Valley deciding who can speak and who can't."
"Free speech doesn't mean that you get paid to speak. That's paid speech. Free speech means no one gets to censor what you have to say."
"Free speech is only important when someone you don't like, or I would say someone who doesn't have your same point of view, is allowed to speak freely and to say their point of view."
"It's pretty fascinating and exciting that Elon Musk is willing to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to backing free speech."
"The best thing to do is to leave free speech alone as much as you possibly can, not because that will result in the perfect conditions for free speech but because anything else that you're likely to do is going to make it worse rather than better."
"Freedom of speech is for speech you think is hate speech. That is exactly what free speech is for."
"That free speech and open dialogue are the royal road to truth."
"Americans choose to use TikTok to express themselves. I don't think Congress should be trying to take away the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans."
"You cannot find a more core First Amendment violation ever. That is the government banning speech it doesn't like."
"The process of free speech is the process by which dogmatic errors are rectified."
"The antidote to pathological dogmatism is free truthful expression."
"Nothing should be above ridicule. Ridicule and satire are one way of getting people to think."
"The answer to bad speech isn't censorship; it's more speech."
"We only figure out what the right answer is if we get there through free speech and open debate."
"It was chilling in the social media case to hear justices... say what's the problem with the government coercing speech."
"Free speech should be used responsibly. We shouldn't be unkind and cruel to each other."
"Speaking truth to power becomes a crime, and exercising your rights becomes an arrestable offense."
"The government does not get to pick what viewpoints are right, what issues we discuss, or what we believe."
"As a matter of principle, government retaliation for the exercise of free speech is problematic; it's wrong."
"There are certain basic principles that we all kind of take for granted: democracy is better than dictatorship, free speech is better than limited speech, personal responsibility is better than shirking personal responsibility."
"Freedom of speech is really important but there are trade-offs to it."
"Free speech means that everybody gets to say what they want to say as long as they're not threatening people or bringing harm on people."
"We proudly continue this tradition by providing our members across the globe with opportunities to question their most fundamentally held beliefs and by standing up for free speech and expression."
"Free speech is under a great deal of threat, under a great deal of pressure."
"The voice of criticism and the voice of disbelief should not be stamped on; it is very important that the voices of dissent should have a place where they're heard."
"You can't stop people from speaking...stopping conversation isn't the way to combat ideas you don't like."
"Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequence."
"Whenever there are consequences for mocking someone, then I think that's the person you ought to be mocking."
"Free speech needs to be defended in every successive generation; it's not something that you get and then it's there forever."
"Absolute freedom of speech is always going to be better and, in fact, by promoting free speech you're doing something to help those very people that you are concerned about."
"Most people who are advocating for free speech are doing so precisely because they are aware that in countries where free speech protections are meager, minorities tend to suffer the most."
"The centrality of free speech as a fundamental right, or the fundamental right perhaps, unless you simultaneously deny the utility of thought."
"I think the reason why we have free speech in our Constitution is it’s on no one but yourself to determine what’s right and wrong."
"Free speech is put into place to protect the individual against the government."
"Free speech is the answer and it could also be profitable and it could also be successful at the same time, allowing a perfect harmony of profit and respect of individuals to speak their mind."
"Even if you disagree with someone's speech, you'll defend their right to express themselves. That's a value that we need as Americans and that's a value that we need online."
"Without Free Speech, we really have nothing at all."
"Everybody loves to play the free speech game until it comes to speech that you disagree with, and then at that point, you see who actually really believes in free speech and who actually really doesn't."
"There's a very clear body of law in the United States that goes back many decades that clarifies what Free Speech means here."
"We should all be free to speak with free expression, but at the same time, we have to recognize again the importance of being fair and balanced."
"It's critically important that people have a right to speak out, and we would oppose efforts to restrict protected speech."
"There's a chance that we are galvanized to reform on those issues... to recognize the threats to free speech, to political liberty."
"You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil."
"We are a free speech nation to our very bones."
"Free speech... might be right on the subject of Russia Ukraine, might be right on the subject of Israel Gaza, so we better let everybody talk."
"Freedom of speech and the propagation of truth through psyche and society point to the fact that there's a real valuable freedom that comes along with just saying what you think you know carefully and clearly."
"Americans like to celebrate our long history of free expression and, as a result, we really hate when something looks or even just feels like censorship."
"The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted."
"Could this be a big win for Free Speech purists?"
"If you restrict speech, you are restricting liberty."
"Free speech isn't for the speech you like; it's for the speech that you find offensive."
"The absence of the right to offend is the absence of the right to speak at all."
"If you have free speech, then there's a much greater chance you're going to get to a truth."
"If someone came to your house, and you didn't like the speech that they were expressing, in your house, these websites and platforms are allowed to kick that person off of their platform."
"America is this country which loves to back itself as the Free Speech Nation, but it seems that so many people in that country sue people for slander if somebody says something slightly negative about them."
"What makes this so hard at the end of the day is that society itself is always reevaluating what is appropriate, what is harmful, and what can be defended as free speech."
"Political discourse, protected speech at its zenith, deals with campaigning or elections and has always been found to be at the height of protected speech."
"The essence of what we have right here... the truth is served by allowing that consensus to be challenged without fear of reprisal."
"‘Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy’."
"The great thing about platforms like Minds and Gab is that you know when you go on them, they're not going to sell you out on free speech."
"Having anyone in charge of free speech is antithetical to free speech."
"Win on the facts, win on the arguments, don't silence the expression of the views."
"Promoting free speech and an equitable society for everybody is what I can do from my platform."
"Free speech as a value means that you're going to have to rebut bad ideas, and that people have a right to speak those bad ideas."
"If Bitcoin is this uncontrollable, uncensorable technology, can the blockchain also enable global free speech?"
"Your platform is so powerful it's being used to manipulate elections and you have rules that are not recognized by the government to remove American citizens from that discourse."
"We have staked upon it all that for speech concerning public affairs is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government."
"Don't have anyone on who would dare criticize the machine, and they are chasing after an audience. That is corruption."
"This is not only about our First Amendment right to speak. The First Amendment protects free speech; it doesn't protect lies that amount to defamation."
"Free speech doesn't protect lies that amount to defamation."
"The concept, the principle of free speech, is what we're talking about, not just the First Amendment."
"When you charge money and you're controlling internet speeds, you're also controlling speech."
"Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences."
"Julian Assange, could he actually walk free? This is a big bombshell part of the Assange story for free speech and freedom of the press."
"The right to not be offended is now more important than the right to speak freely."
"We're not ending this fight for net neutrality. This affects our business, this affects the future of the internet, and this affects free speech."
"Freedom loving protesters...fighting for free speech and resisting the Communist Party of China."
"The ramifications of curtailing free speech are more dire than what can happen if you allow free speech."
"If you say, 'We are going to marginalize and silence certain views,' you then have to deal with the unintended consequences of censorship, and censorship never works."
"If you don't have free speech, you don't have a free society."
"My belief is that if you let people speak, you can either figure out if they know what they're talking about or not."
"It's time for us to globally recalibrate what free speech means."
"You could say 'Trump is a moron, he's a fascist' and not worry about being put in jail—that's something not to take for granted."
"Neither free speech nor academic freedom guarantees anybody a platform, or the freedom from consequences, criticism, or protest, which are themselves often forms of free speech."
"Free speech matters and these kinds of NDAs, stemming from this, are unquestionably unconstitutional."
"Free speech matters a lot to me and that's not just a T-shirt slogan."
"I regard free speech as a prerequisite to a civilized society."
"I have to have free speech in order to be able to advocate and be able to hopefully change the world for the better."
"We were at some sort of far-right angry rally and I thought the video is up there... this thing could not have been a more joyous expression of free speech."
"What we are fighting for is so that we can have [free speech] in the future because if we don't have control of the present, we do not have control of the future."
"We have to fight hard for free speech, which is the bedrock of a functioning democracy."
"If somebody's coming to counter-protest you and they're being perfectly peaceful, that person also has free speech rights."
"Compromising freedom of speech may seem dangerous until we weigh that compromise against the men and women massacred in Buffalo for instance, or the many other places where radicalized violent extremists found their motivation to kill on social media."
"Instead of encouraging free speech and the viewing of multiple sources, the media keeps doubling down on stupid."
"It is precisely in times of emergency that free speech becomes most important."
"The beauty is our country is founded on the very principle of free speech; it's in the First Amendment for a reason."
"The path to truth runs through free speech and open debate."
"Powerful people don't need their free speech protected. It's people who are precisely marginalized and oppressed who need all the protection of the law."
"Did Europe just take a big step towards eliminating personal freedom and free speech with the passage of the Digital Services Act? Yes, it's now law and enforceable in Europe."
"Censorship isn't always bad if it protects from harm, but we must be cautious when it stifles free speech."
"I'm not a free speech absolutist; I'm just more interested in free speech than they are."
"The reason we say incitement isn't free speech is that it doesn't express a sentiment, ideology, or whatever."
"The Supreme Court basically interpreted free speech to be about expressing yourself."
"Christopher Hitchens once said, 'If someone's voice is silenced, then I am deprived of the right to hear.'"
"Without free speech, there isn't true thought."
"4chan is the world's greatest experiment in free speech."
"Free speech is never popular, and neither is 4chan, but both of them are of paramount importance."
"Political correctness is expanding free speech. We're adding words to the dictionary every year in an effort to promote more inclusive and respectful speech."
"Free speech is not the number of words in your lexicon; it is whether you are able to express political ideas without ramifications."
"I would defend your right to say anything you have to say to the death, regardless of how much I disagree with it."
"Free speech is only relevant if we allow people that you don't like to say things you don't like; otherwise, it loses all meaning."
"The free exchange of difficult ideas is the only mechanism through which we can make progress. Truth is not a safe space; truth is humbling, and being humbled can hurt, but this is the role of education."
"Speech is not violence. This is a fundamental distinction."
"I feel like college campuses are the best place to bring controversial speakers and have controversial ideas presented."
"I feel all ideas should be presented on a level playing field; none of them should have predetermined advantages or disadvantages based on what specifically is being said."
"The First Amendment doesn't give companies a right to deceive children or to undermine their health."
"Free speech is not just the threats from the government; it's this cultural censorship."
"It's the method of vicious attack, moral outrage overriding speech, and ignoring evidence that reeks of religious fervor."
"I just want to believe in free speech. I want to say make your points and we'll argue it."
"Tonight's event is very important for free speech, especially free speech from university campuses."
"Free speech is important because it's one of those things that you can't change people's values, you can't persuade them that their values might need updating if you can't have these kind of difficult conversations."
"Donald Trump threatens to shut down NBC and other TV news networks that criticized him. This is not acceptable... they must be allowed to speak. There's just no way of spinning this. This is completely wrong for Donald Trump to have done. I absolutely condemn it."
"I believe free speech is vital to a democracy."
"Political speech is usually referred to as the core of the First Amendment."
"Official reprisal for protected speech offends the Constitution because it threatens to inhibit the exercise of the protected right."
"The law is settled that, as a general matter, the First Amendment prohibits government officials from subjecting an individual to retaliatory actions, including criminal prosecutions, for speaking out."
"We're winning free speech, free own inquiry, free association; it's all winning."
"Free speech is the predicate to having an open conversation on any of these important issues."
"Free speech becomes under more and more threat because people dare not actually express their honestly held opinion."
"Everybody who's being described as a member of the IDW probably has, among other things, one thing in common: they all are used to being yelled at for saying things that are self-evident."
"Every tyrant and despot throughout history has done what our leading media organizations are doing now: attempting with all their force to crush free speech."
"What is truly dangerous is not free speech, but the attempts to deny it."
"We use our free speech to face the chaotic potential of the world and its horrors, to structure it, to understand it, to communicate about it, and to reach consensus."
"Valve took the side of free speech and consumer choice, deciding that they would not restrict content if it was deemed offensive."
"Steam has taken a pro free-speech position, one that I appreciate and one that I fully totally support because I believe in the consumer far more than I believe in a corporation to decide what's best for you."
"I'm not necessarily in favor of deplatforming people with controversial views."
"The Free Speech rights of a rich person should not be louder than the Free Speech rights of average Americans."
"It's unpopular speech that needs protecting."
"It's not the conversations about Twitter and free speech that are tiring; it's the culture around it that needs change."
"The government's ability to regulate speech in a traditional public forum such as a street, sidewalk, or park is sharply circumscribed."
"Freedom of speech must include those who would replace democracy with other systems of governance."
"Failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy."
"I like heretics. I like dissidents. I like the people who say the thing that no one else will say."
"Open debate is not racist. Open debate is very healthy in an academic community."
"Free speech is a principle, it's an ethic, it's a position that we hold culturally."