free speech -- it's good to have it!

of course, free speech and the restriction thereof has ruffled the feathers of many more people before. and since all good lists are incomplete without the names of smart people, let me present you with just a few examples:

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
--Laurence Peter, professor of education, 1977

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 Churchill

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.
--Salman Rushdie

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
-- Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950

Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson, February 11, 1964

Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.
-- Mark Twain

Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.
-- Judy Blume

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
-- Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
--George Orwell, 1984