Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Freedom of Speech and Political Correctness: Quotes About the First Amendment
In honor of George Orwell’s birthday yesterday, here’s a selection of our favorite quotes about freedom of speech, political correctness, and the First Amendment.
“Political correctness is tyranny; just tyranny with manners.”
– Charlton Heston
“Why does the left hate free speech? Because they don’t know how to talk about the substantive merits when they are challenged. Having submerged themselves in disciplining each other by denouncing any heretics in their midst, they find themselves overwhelmed and outnumbered in America, where there is vibrant debate about all sorts of things they don’t know how to begin to talk about. They resort to stomping their feet and shouting ‘shut up’… when they aren’t prissily imploring everyone to be ‘civil.’”
– Author Ann Althouse
“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”
– Mark Twain
“The right to speak freely does not include the right to be taken seriously. And it certainly doesn’t include the obligation that others must supply you with a platform.”
– Johan Norberg
“Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.”
– Aryeh Neier
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.”
– Philip K. Dick
“Political correctness is a sinister device constructed by the left to cause the negative outcomes of left-wing ideology to never be subject to criticism.”
– Peter McLoughlin
“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.”
– Henry A. Wallace
“I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.”
– P.D. James
“Political correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by the mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”
– RJ Wiedemann
“If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.”
– Epictetus
“A joke is either funny or it’s not funny. If I hear a funny joke, you know what I do? I laugh, that’s what I do. I don’t start a focus group to see who got hurt by the joke.”
– Alonzo Bodden
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”
– Ray Bradbury
“Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious.”
– Bill Lind
“To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?”
– Kevin Alfred Strom
“Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
– Robert A. Heinlein
“Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”
– Maimonides
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
– Voltaire
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum…”
– Noam Chomsky
“Debate refines a good idea. That’s why we have two major parties in Congress. Somebody says, “I have a great idea for the country.” We say, “Wonderful! Put it on the table. Let’s debate.” And we start the debate by questioning the guy who has this great idea. After the third question he says, “I withdraw my great idea. I forgot about those three questions.”
– Jim Rohn
“We (as a society) have to be committed to defending free speech however impolitic, or unpopular, or even wrong because defending that is the only barrier to violence. That’s because the only way we can influence one another short of physical violence is thru speech, thru communicating ideas. The moment you say certain ideas can’t be communicated you create a circumstance where people have no alternative but to go hands on you.”
– Sam Harris
Continue reading Freedom of Speech and Political Correctness Quotes: Quotes About the First Amendment at Ammo.com.
Published in Culture
I’ll throw in a favourite of mine:
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of their folly is to fill the world with fools. Herbert Spenser
Political correctness is a product of the Soviets.
There is no such thing as being “politically” correct. Either you are right, or you are wrong. Just like there is no such thing as “my” truth, or “my” lived reality. These are terms that are flaunted about freely today that are deeply routed in cultural Marxism.
I do not recall if the Soviets used any variation on that expression, but the Maoist Chinese used many, such as “correct Mao Tse-Tung thought”. Once American patriots began to mock such slogans, American leftists began to claim that such the expression was an invention of the Right or that the Left had only ever used it ironically. (Marxists lie about everything, and without even a trace of shame.)
EDIT: If anybody can clarify what related expressions the Soviets used, I would greatly appreciate it.
I don’t think this is true anymore. The “oppressed” are indeed determining the bounds of censorship.
That’s a great bunch of quotations! I’m “borrowing” them for use in my community newsletter. Thanks, Ammo.
No, I think that the “oppressed” determining the bounds of acceptable speech means that the “oppressed” are not really oppressed. Though there is the complication that privileged powerful people are using the “oppressed” to enhance the power of those privileged powerful people are able to exert.
FDR’s communist Vice President.
Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.
If he was a communist, then he would likely see fascists as the enemy, and ascribe behavior to that enemy which his own side, the communists, would NEVER EVER do themselves.
So he wasn’t actually “correct” since he was asserting that only “the other guy” would do that, not his own side.
Or he would see violence done by communists as entirely justifiable.
To me, this is the most underrated assessment of how the left works. They take something with a solid definition – like “marriage” – then assign a modifier to it that is antithetical to its meaning – like “gay” – and voila! You have now framed the debate as being about “gay marriage”, as if it was always a thing. Look in a dictionary now and you’ll find definitions like “two people joined in a union”. Before long, the definition will be “two or more people joined in a union” . . .
So, you’re bigoted against people who marry themselves? Good to know!
Don’t forget people who marry animals…or trees…or ghosts…or architecture. (If someone marries a tree, will AOC demand that Obamacare cover watering, fertilizer, and pesticide?)
I don’t think I can reasonably request credit for copying smarter guys’ quotes!
By modern standards any politician who served before 2016 is now “litrully Hitlur.”
I’m going to legally incorporate, which creates another entity, and name that company My Dog. Since the company is me and I am a man, that’s gay marriage. The company is My Dog so it’s bestiality. My own auto-consanguinity approaches 100%, so that’s incest. A company is only legally a person, but not actually, so that’s an object fetish. With all these entities in the mix, it’s polyamory. You perverts are pikers. You’re not even trying. (This is from a ricochet post from 2015. No; I can’t take credit … or blame.)
Andrew Klavan did one opening monologue on his podcast about women marrying themselves. I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t breathe . . .