“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 Truman
“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.”
—George Orwell, author, c. 1945
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
—Noam Chomsky, speaking in a BBC television interview with John Pilger on The Late Show (1992)
“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.”
—UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights