"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
— Salman Rushdie

"The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things."
— Lois Lowry

"Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.""
— Winston S. Churchill

"Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared."
— Barack Obama

"To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."
— Barack Obama

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."
— Barack Obama

"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship."
— George Bernard Shaw (Mrs. Warren's Profession)

"from Bill Clinton speech-
"People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power...""
— Bill Clinton

"Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon's hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly - once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation."
— Toni Morrison

"Self-consciousness kills communication."
— Rick Steves

"If Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he would want me to say to all the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by the churches, by the government, by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours."
— Dustin Lance Black

"The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good."
— Barack Obama

"The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust."
— Josh Billings

"My father always said that too many words cheapened the value of a man's speech."
— Patricia Briggs (Raven's Shadow)

"Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet."
— Barack Obama

"You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak."
— George Clooney

"Darkness promotes speech."
— Alberto Manguel (The Library at Night)

""Do not speak about freedom of speech if you are not prepared for the consequences""
— Susan Loone

""'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged."

- Quoting Judge Aaron Satie (TNG: "The Drumhead") "
— Jean Luc Picard

"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
— President Obama

""But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete." (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)"
— John F. Kennedy

""And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation – the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence?" (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)"
— John F. Kennedy

"When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired 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. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. "
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

"The chatterer reveals every corner of his shallow mind."
— Mike Bell

"Speech is the voice of the heart."
— Anna Quindlen

""My friends...""
— John McCain

"There is always someone in life trying to take your spot (Diddy)."
— P.Diddy

"Mannerism, especially when it takes the form of recurrent word or phrase, is by no means easy to represent; there is but a hair's breadth between the point at which the reader delightfully recognizes is as a revealing habit of speech, and the point at which its iteration begin to weary him."
— Mary Lascelles (Jane Austen and Her Art)

"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one."
— A.J. Liebling

""Alliteration seems to offend people.""
— Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas)

"'I'm Valerie Rye,' she said, savoring the words. 'It's all right for you to talk to me.'"
— Octavia E. Butler (Bloodchild and Other Stories: Second Edition)

"Life is absolutely unbearable. And we're going to die."
— Marjane Satrapi

"I consider myself the luckiest man to ever walk the face of the earth""
— Lou Gehrig

"Be sure that you speak with unfeigned lips."
— Marie de France (The Lais of Marie de France)

"I don't have an English accent because this is what English sounds like when spoken properly."
— James Carr

"This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

It is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend"
— Barack Obama

"I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves."
— Peggy Noonan (Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now)

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

"
— William Pitt

"Walls of speech, space inwards--
wound into yourself,
you rave your way to the very last one.

The fog burns off.

The heat sinks in."
— Paul Celan (Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan)