Free society Quotes

“Freedom of speech”

“Freedom of assembly”

“Electoral politics has never succeeded in achieving a free society.”

“The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.”

“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”

“We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.”

“But it is also true that in a free society an individual will be esteemed according to the manner in which he uses his freedom.”

“In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.”

“Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.”

“If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.”

“Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.”

“The freedom to have a private conversation – free from the worry that a hostile government, a rogue government agent or a competitor or a criminal are listening – is central to a free society.”

“In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.”

“The American project of bringing a free society to Iraq could not possibly have worked. Why not? Because a free society requires a free market, and the American regime of conquest was founded on socialist planning by the state.”

“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, 'a new form of servitude.'”

“Regulating speech is a dangerous notion and, not compatible with the principles of a free society. The Founders recognized this, and thus explicitly prohibited Congress from making any laws that might abridge freedom of speech or of the press.”

“A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. Free society must fertilize the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow.”

“The course of decision in this Court has thus far jealously enforced the principle of a free society secured by the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. Its safeguards are not to be worn away by a process of devitalizing interpretation.”

“The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence. All initiation of force is a violation of someone else’s rights, whether initiated by and individual or the state,…”

“The danger to a free society is not the guns owned by the citizens but an unconstrained government, especially one that is better armed than the public. An armed society is a self-governing society, just as a disarmed people are vulnerable to arbitrary power of every kind.”