Instructions[edit]
- Select a new quote attributed to a different individual than any of those currently quoted below.
- Add a new Quote to the next available subpage, using the layout format from the link above.
- Add a citation of where the quote was stated on that subpage below the quote.
- Update the "Random subpage" start and end values at the Main Portal page to include the new Quote.
Quote list[edit]
Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/1
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In our time, political speech and writing are the defence of the indefensible.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/2
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Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/3
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The freedom of speech and of the press, which are secured by the First Amendment against abridgment by the United States, are among the fundamental personal rights and liberties which are secured to all persons by the Fourteenth Amendment against abridgment by a state. The safeguarding of these rights to the ends that men may speak as they think on matters vital to them and that falsehoods may be exposed through the processes of education and discussion is essential to free government. Those who won our independence had confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning and communication of ideas to discover and spread political and economic truth.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/4
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Prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment Rights.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/5
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We are required in this case to determine for the first time the extent to which the constitutional protections for speech and press limit a State's power to award damages in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/6
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We conclude that public figures and public officials may not recover for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of publications such as the one here at issue without showing, in addition, that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with 'actual malice,' i.e., with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was true. This is not merely a 'blind application' of the New York Times standard, see Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374, 390 (1967); it reflects our considered judgment that such a standard is necessary to give adequate "breathing space" to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/7
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The dissemination of the individual's opinions on matters of public interest is for us, in the historic words of the Declaration of Independence, an 'unalienable right' that 'governments are instituted among men to secure.' History shows us that the Founders were not always convinced that unlimited discussion of public issues would be 'for the benefit of all of us' but that they firmly adhered to the proposition that the 'true liberty of the press' permitted 'every man to publish his opinion'.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/8
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I think the conviction of appellant or anyone else for exhibiting a motion picture abridges freedom of the press as safeguarded by the First Amendment, which is made obligatory on the States by the Fourteenth.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/9
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The censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/10
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That there is a social problem presented by obscenity is attested by the expression of the legislatures of the forty-eight States, as well as the Congress. To recognize the existence of a problem, however, does not require that we sustain any and all measures adopted to meet that problem. The history of the application of laws designed to suppress the obscene demonstrates convincingly that the power of government can be invoked under them against great art or literature, scientific treatises, or works exciting social controversy. Mistakes of the past prove that there is a strong countervailing interest to be considered in the freedoms guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/11
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Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulating obscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one's own home. If the First Amendmen means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/12
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... I would not in this case decide, even by way of dicta, that the Government may lawfully seize literary material intended for the purely private use of the importer. The terms of the statute appear to apply to an American tourist who, after exercising his constitutionally protected liberty to travel abroad, returns home with a single book in his luggage, with no intention of selling it or otherwise using it, except to read it. If the Government can constitutionally take the book away from him as he passes through customs, then I do not understand the meaning of Stanley v. Georgia.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/13
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I rise today to support the efforts of citizens everywhere to protect free speech on the Internet. Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments to determine the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act [CDA], which criminalizes certain speech on the Internet. It is because of the hard work and dedication to free speech by netizens everywhere that this issue has gained the attention of the public, and now, our Nation's highest court. I have maintained from the very beginning that the CDA is unconstitutional, and I eagerly await the Supreme Court's decision on this case.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/14
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Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/15
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The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/16
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The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/17
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The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. / One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/18
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Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/19
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Cyberspace may give freedom of speech more muscle than the First Amendment does. It may already have become literally impossible for a government to shut people up.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/20
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If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/21
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Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/22
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The liberty of the press ... consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this is to destroy the freedom of the press; but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequences of his own temerity.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/23
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If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. ... Though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied ... Even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension [of] or feeling [for] its rational grounds.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/24
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When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/25
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[There exists a] profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/26
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If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/27
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All Ministers ... who were Oppressors, or intended to be Oppressors, have been loud in their Complaints against Freedom of Speech, and the License of the Press; and always restrained, or endeavored to restrain, both.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/28
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The liberty of the press is the birthright of a Briton, and is justly esteemed the firmest bulwark of the liberties of this country. It has been the terror of all bad ministers; for their dark and dangerous designs, of their weakness, inability, and duplicity, have thus been detected and shown to the public, generally in too strong and just colors for them to bear up against the odium of mankind. ... A wicked and corrupt administration must naturally dread this appeal to the world; and will be for keeping all the means of information from the prince, parliament, and people.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/29
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There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/30
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I confess I do not see in what cases the Congress can, with any pretence of right, make a law to suppress the freedom of the press; though I am not clear, that Congress is restrained from laying any duties whatever on certain pieces printed, and perhaps Congress may require large bonds for the payment of these duties. Should the printer say, the freedom of the press was secured by the constitution of the state in which he lived, Congress might, and perhaps, with great propriety, answer, that the federal constitution is the only compact existing between them and the people; in this compact the people have named no others, and therefore Congress, in exercising the powers assigned them, and in making laws to carry them into execution are restrained by nothing beside the federal constitution.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/31
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Next year, Congress will go back to the drawing board to rewrite the CDA. When that time comes, I am optimistic that a more educated Congress will develop a solution that protects our children and protects our free speech.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/32
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Countries that censor news and information must recognize that from an economic standpoint, there is no distinction between censoring political speech and commercial speech. If businesses in your nations are denied access to either type of information, it will inevitably impact on growth.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/33
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A law imposing criminal penalties on protected speech is a stark example of speech suppression.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/34
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First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/35
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The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/36
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First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/37
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In order for the State in the person of school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/38
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Under our Constitution, free speech is not a right that is given only to be so circumscribed that it exists in principle but not in fact. Freedom of expression would not truly exist if the right could be exercised only in an area that a benevolent government has provided as a safe haven for crackpots. The Constitution says that Congress (and the States) may not abridge the right to free speech. This provision means what it says. We properly read it to permit reasonable regulation of speech-connected activities in carefully restricted circumstances. But we do not confine the permissible exercise of First Amendment rights to a telephone booth or the four corners of a pamphlet, or to supervised and ordained discussion in a school classroom.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/39
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In the national debate about a serious issue, it is the expression of the minority's viewpoint that most demands the protection of the First Amendment. Whatever the better policy may be, a full and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana is far wiser than suppression of speech because it is unpopular.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/40
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The exceptional nature of its limitations places in a strong light the general conception that liberty of the press, historically considered and taken up by the Federal Constitution, has meant, principally, although not exclusively, immunity from previous restraints or censorship.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/41
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It is no longer open to doubt that the liberty of the press, and of speech, is within the liberty safeguarded by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from invasion by state action. It was found impossible to conclude that this essential personal liberty of the citizen was left unprotected by the general guaranty of fundamental rights of person and property.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/42
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Authoritative interpretations of the First Amendment guarantees have consistently refused to recognize an exception for any test of truth — whether administered by judges, juries, or administrative officials — and especially one that puts the burden of proving truth on the speaker.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/43
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I am sure that as soon as speech was invented, efforts to suppress and control it began, and that process of suppression continues unabated.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/44
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Our Founding Fathers were the first to articulate the reasons for their First Amendment, the same reasons given by Learned Hand, and by Justice Brennan in New York Times v. Sullivan. It is a lesson we keep forgetting and must relearn in each succeeding generation.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/45
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New York Times v. Sullivan was about the suppression of speech in the South [during the 1960s]. Today's version of suppression is just another verse of the same song.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/46
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In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection is must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/47
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Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/48
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The word "security" is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security four our Republic.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/49
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Effective self-government cannot succeed unless the people are immersed in a steady, robust, unimpeded, and uncensored flow of opinion and reporting which are continuously subjected to critique, rebuttal, and reexamination.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/50
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The people, the ultimate governors, must have absolute freedom of, and therefore privacy of, their individual opinions and beliefs regardless of how suspect or strange they may appear to others. Ancillary to that principle is the conclusion that an individual must also have absolute privacy over whatever information he may generate in the course of testing his opinions and beliefs.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/51
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It is my view that there is no "compelling need" that can be shown which qualifies the reporter's immunity from appearing or testifying before a grand jury, unless the reporter himself is implicated in a crime. His immunity, in my view, is therefore quite complete, for, absent his involvement in a crime, the First Amendment protects him against an appearance before a grand jury, and, if he is involved in a crime, the Fifth Amendment stands as a barrier. ... And since, in my view, a newsman has an absolute right not to appear before a grand jury, it follows for me that a journalist who voluntarily appears before that body may invoke his First Amendment privilege to specific questions.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/52
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It's hard to think of important prosecutions that have not gone forward because reporters have refused to give information. On the other hand, it's hard to make the argument that freedom of the press has been terribly infringed by the legal regime that's been set up. So it may be that the Supreme Court looks at the status quo and says: "Nothing seems terribly wrong with this. People are ignoring a little bit what we said, but it seems to have results that are not too bad, from either perspective."
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/53
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[This is] the most important question relating to the reporter's privilege: Who's entitled to claim it? When the privilege started, it was meant to cover the establishment press: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the major television networks. But as our media have become more diverse and more diffuse, the question of who is a member of the press, and so who gets to claim the privilege, has really come to the fore. Is the blogger entitled to claim it? And if the blogger is, then why not you, and me, and everybody else in the world? And once that happens, there's a real problem for prosecutors seeking to obtain information. So the question of whether you can draw lines in this area, and if so how, is the real question of privilege.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/54
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Historically, of course, the Supreme Court really hasn't recognized that kind of reality. It hasn't tried to make distinctions among different kinds of press entities. And there may be strong reasons not to do this. First Amendment law is already very complicated. And if you're asking the Court now to superimpose a whole new set of distinctions on what has already become an unbearable number of complex distinctions, you may end up feeling sorry. There are lots and lots of different kinds of press entities and other speakers. And if each one gets its own First Amendment doctrine, that might be a world we don't want to live in.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/55
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Active liberty is particularly at risk when law restricts speech directly related to the shaping of public opinion, for example, speech that takes place in areas related to politics and policy-making by elected officials. That special risk justifies especially strong pro-speech judicial presumptions. It also justifies careful review whenever the speech in question seeks to shape public opinion, particularly if that opinion in turn will affect the political process and the kind of society in which we live.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/56
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The Court said that the First Amendment forbids statutory effort to restrict information in order to help the public make wiser decisions.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/57
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Traditional modern liberty — the individual's freedom from government restriction — remains important. Individuals need information freely to make decisions about their own lives. And, irrespective of context, a particular rule affecting speech might, in a particular instance, require individuals to act against conscience, inhibit public debate, threaten artistic expression, censor views in ways unrelated to a program's basic objectives, or create other risks of abuse. These possibilities themselves form the raw material out of which courts will create different presumptions applicable in different speech contexts. And even in the absence of presumptions, courts will examine individual instances with the possibilities of such harms in mind.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/58
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Money is not speech, it is money. But the expenditure of money enables speech, and that expenditure is often necessary to communicate a message, particularly in a political context. A law that forbade the expenditure of money to communicate could effectively suppress the message.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/59
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All speech should be presumed to be protected by the Constitution, and a heavy burden should be placed on those who would censor to demonstrate with relative certainty that the speech at issue, if not censored, would lead to irremediable and immediate serious harm.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/60
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I care deeply about freedom of speech, but I am also a realist about terrorism and the threat it poses. I worry that among the first victims of another mass terrorist attack will be civil liberties, including freedom of speech. The right of every citizen to express dissident and controversial views remains a powerful force in my life. I not only believe in it, I practice it.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/61
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Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/62
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Under our First Amendment, a censorship law would have to be written in broad general language and could not be directed at specific religious, ethnic, racial, or political groups. Any such law could be misused by politicians to censor their political enemies or other "undesirable" groups.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/63
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Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/64
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May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/65
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The diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/66
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If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/67
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Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/68
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The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. ... the press in its historic connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/69
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Although the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment may benefit society generally, or communities in particular, we don't condition those freedoms on whether how we use them benefits anyone. There is no legal or constitutional requirement that each individual use these freedoms wisely. That is part of what it means to live in an open society: you get to make your own choice about whether to acquire wisdom. We don't let government choose for us.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/70
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Among the principles in place that have seemed to work for us are individual freedom of expression (especially for those whose expression offends us) and a strong individual guarantee of privacy in our First Amendment-protected communications.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/71
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In short, individual freedom of speech leads to a stronger society. But knowing that principle is not enough. You have to know how to put it to use on the Net.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/72
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Exploring and understanding the Net is an ongoing process. Cyberspace never sits still; it evolves as fast as society itself. Only if we fight to preserve our freedom of speech on the Net will we ensure our ability to keep up with both the Net and society.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/73
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I care about what happens in cyberspace, and to our freedoms in cyberspace, because I dwell there part of the time.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/74
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The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions — knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions and ideas — become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/75
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It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/76
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Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/77
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Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/78
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If all of mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/79
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There is no indication - either in the text of the Constitution or in our cases interpreting it - that a separate judicial category exists for the American flag alone. ... We decline ... therefore to create for the flag an exception to the joust of principles protected by the First Amendment.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/80
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No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write or print freely on any subject whatever.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/81
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If the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and press is to mean anything, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/82
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The standard of what offends 'the common conscience of the community' conflicts ... with the command of the First Amendment. ... Certainly that standard would not be an acceptable one if religion, economics, politics or philosophy were involved. How does it become a constitutional standard when literature treating with sex is concerned? / Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to 'sexual impurity' or has a tendency to 'excite lustful thoughts.' This is community censorship in one of its worst forms...
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/83
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Freedom of speech is central to most every other right that we hold dear in the United States and serves to strengthen the democracy of our great country. It is unfortunate, then, when actions occur that might be interpreted as contrary to this honored tenet.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/84
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Proponents of using government authority to censor certain undesirable images and comments on the airwaves resort to the claim that the airways belong to all the people, and therefore it's the government's responsibility to protect them. The mistake of never having privatized the radio and TV airwaves does not justify ignoring the first amendment mandate that "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech." When everyone owns something, in reality nobody owns it. Control then occurs merely by the whims of the politicians in power. From the very start, licensing of radio and TV frequencies invited government censorship that is no less threatening than that found in totalitarian societies.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/85
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As a conservative who believes in limited government, I believe the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press. A free press ensures the flow of information to the public, and let me say, during a time when the role of government in our lives and in our enterprises seems to grow every day--both at home and abroad--ensuring the vitality of a free and independent press is more important than ever.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/86
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How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/87
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And I honor the man who is willing to sink / Half his present repute for the freedom to think, / And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, / Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/88
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Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being "pushed to an extreme", not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/89
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The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/90
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All forms of government ultimately are not going to succeed in trying to control or censor the Internet.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/91
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By 1996, there was enough material on the Internet to show that this thing was the cornerstone for how people are going to be publishing. It is the people's library.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/92
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I don't want to produce a work of art that the public can sit and suck aesthetically ... I want to give them a blow in the small of the back, to scorch their indifference, to startle them out of their complacency.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/93
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I'm a social gadfly, I'm a writer; it's my job to make fun of the people I don't agree with. We got in trouble for that in school -- now we get paid for it.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/94
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Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/95
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Our leaders would like the FBI to have the right to know what books we're reading, check out our medical records without our knowledge, monitor our telephone calls and e-mails, and continue to imprison anyone suspected of terrorism and hold them for indeterminate amounts of time without charging them with a crime. At the same time, cargo ships are still entering our harbors with unchecked cargo.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/96
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I think this conflict [against terrorism] is going to require a suspension of freedom and rights unlike anything we have ever seen, at least since World War II.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/97
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As a young constitutional lawyer, I was put to the first amendment test when I was called on to defend racists and neo-Nazis. I really had no choice. Surely now we know that none of us do. Free speech is unequivocal, unpolitical, and indivisible.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/98
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Regardless of all of the ways that the media have changed in recent years, one thing that will never go out of style in America is the ability of a free press to keep the public accurately and honestly informed about its government.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/99
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Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/100
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Every important freedom that Western individuals possess rests on free expression. We observe what is wrong, and we say what is wrong, in order that it may be corrected. This is the message of the Enlightenment, the rational process that developed today's Western values: Go. Inquire. Ask. Find out. Dare to know. Don't be afraid of what you'll find. Knowledge is better than superstition, blind belief, and dogma. If you cannot voice — or even consider — criticism, then you will never see what is wrong. You cannot solve a problem unless you identify its source.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/101
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Why do I need this protection? I am not a president or a king; I am a mere member of the Dutch Parliament, one of 150 elected parliamentarians in the Tweede Kamer, the House of Representatives of the Netherlands, a small country of 16.5 million in Western Europe. However, I have joined Westergaard in a rapidly growing group of individuals throughout the world who have been marked for death for criticizing Islam. For asserting our rights to say what we really think about this political ideology that disguises itself as a religion, we have been hounded by Muslims seeking to make an example of us. Offend us, they are saying to the world, and you will end up in hiding like Wilders, attacked like Westergaard, or dead like van Gogh.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/102
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We must defend freedom of speech, which is the most important of our liberties. So long as we are free to speak, we can tell people the truth and make them realize what's at stake. The truth is our only weapon—we must use it. The West's political, academic, and media establishment are concealing the true scope of the Islamic threat. But the people sense they are not getting the whole story, and they are eager to know more. We must spread the message.
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Portal:Freedom of speech/Selected quote/103
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It [Islam] is a religion or a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose of establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society ... because of media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown.
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Nominations[edit]
New quotes may be nominated on the talk page.
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