21 quotes
We do not protect freedom in order to indulge error. We protect freedom in order to discover truth.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
The most effective censorship is not, in fact, legal; in a democracy—as Tocqueville pointed out in Democracy in America—it is public opinion.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.
Two centuries ago our forefathers brought forth a new nation; now we must join with others to bring forth a new world order.
writing for the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia in A Declaration of INTERdependence (1976)
A nation that silences or intimidates original minds is left only with unoriginal minds and cannot hope to hold its own in the competition of peace or of war.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
If you are going to penalize disloyalty, you must first determine what loyalty is; if you are going to silence nonconformity, you must determine what conformity is—and to what it conforms.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
Loyalty...is a realization that America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
We must therefore look with grave misgivings upon the psychology of the ‘crusade’ or on the notion that we can make the world over in our own image either by persuasion or by coercion.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
If the preservation of our freedom depends upon the courts then we are, indeed, lost, for in the long run neither courts nor Constitution can save us from our own errors, follies, or wickedness.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
The American people have a stake in the maintenance of the most thorough-going inquisition into American institutions. They have a stake in nonconformity, for they know that the American genius is nonconformist.
Who is Loyal to America? (1947)
The greatest danger that threatens us is neither heterodox thought nor orthodox thought, but the absence of thought.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
By insisting upon conformity in the intellectual arena and by threatening with disapproval all those who dissent or who give us unpopular advice, we are in danger of following the totalitarian philosophy—and the totalitarian mistakes.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
But if our democracy is to flourish it must have criticism, if our government is to function it must have dissent. Only totalitarian governments insist upon conformity and they—as we know—do so at their peril.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
There are limits on liberty, as there are limits on authority. The broad principle of those limits is generally recognized and accepted; no liberties may be exercised so as to injure others or injure the community.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past—Jefferson and Paine, Emerson and Thoreau—while we silence the rebels of the present.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
The search for subversives results in the intimidation of the independent, the original, the imaginative, and the experimental-minded...It discourages the discussion of controversial matters in the classroom, for such discussion may be reported, or misreported, and cause trouble.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
Freedom in not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
Uncertain of principles, we fall back on emotion; unfamiliar with the past, we are afraid of the future. Increasingly we look to men, ideas, and institutions not from the point of view of how they work, but from the point of view of how they ought to work…
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
This approach emphasizes what was once familiar enough to all Americans—and what we are now in danger of forgetting—that government derives its power from men; that rights of life and liberty are inalienable; that these rights are not something that government graciously confers upon men, but things no government can take away from men.
Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
We are shocked when we see educators, timid before criticism and confused about first principles, betray their trust. And we wonder what can be that 'philosophy of education' which believes that young people can be trained to the duties of citizenship by wrapping their minds in cotton wool.
Who is Loyal to America? (1947)