It follows that errors of the understanding must be treated by appeals to the understanding. That argument should be opposed by 'argument, and fact by fact. That fine and imprisonment are bad forms of syllogism, well calculated to irritate, but powerless for refutation. They may suppress truth, they can never elicit it.-Thomas Cooper (1800).

The good of mankind is a dream if it is not to be secured by preserving for all men the possible maximum of liberty of action and of freedom of thought.-John M. Robertson (1905).

Of what use is freedom of thought, if it will not produce freedom of action, which is the sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of all objections against Christianity? And therefore the free thinkers consider it an edifice where all the parts have such a mutual dependence on each other, that, if you pull out one single nail, the whole fabric must fall to the ground.Jonathan Swift (1740).

Science, knowledge and investigation should be free. You must not make hypocrites of our authors and teachers. You must not strait-jacket the human mind.-Louis I. Newman (1925).

The people are the only censors of their governors; and even their errors will tend to keep them to the true principles of their institutions. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers, and be capable of reading them.-Thomas Jefferson (1787).

Next to life and liberty, we consider education the greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind. The public funds should be appropriated (to reasonable extent) to the purpose of education upon a regular system that shall insure the opportunity to every individual of obtaining a competent education before he shall have arrived at the age of maturity.-Resolutions adopted at Meeting of Mechanics and Workingmen, New York City (1829).

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.-James A. Garfield (1880).

Universities should be places in which thought is free from all fetters, and in which all sources of knowledge, and all aids of learning should be accessible to all comers, without distinction of creed or country, riches or poverty. Thomas H. Huxley (1874).

A motion for opening the doors of the Senate Chamber has again been lost by a considerable majority-in defiance of instruction, in security to free men. What means this conduct? Which expression does it carry strongest with it, contempt for you or tyranny? Are you freemen who ought to know the individual conduct of your legislators, or are you an inferior order of being

incapable of comprehending the sublimity of senatorial functions, and unworthy to be instructed with their opinions? How are you to know the just from the unjust steward when they are covered with the mantle of concealment? Can there be any question of legislative import which freemen should not be acquainted with? What are you to expect when stewards of your household refuse to give account of their stewardship? Secrecy is necessary to design and a masque to treachery; honesty shrinks not from the public eye.

The Peers of America disdain to be seen by vulgar eyes, the music of their voices is harmony only for themselves and must not vibrate in the ravished ear of an ungrateful and unworthy multitude. Is there any congeniality excepting in the administration, between the government of Great Brittain and the government of the United States, The Senate supposes there is, and usurps the secret privileges of the House of Lords. Remember my fellow citizens, that you are still freemen; let it be impressed upon your minds that you depend not upon your representatives but that they depend upon you, and let this truth be ever present to you, that secrecy in your representatives is a worm which will prey and fatten upon the vitals of your liberty.-Philip Freneau (1792).

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of both mind and body will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.-Thomas Jefferson (1816).

To enjoy our rights and liberties, we must understand them; their security and protection ought to be the first object of a free people; and it is a well established fact that no nation has ever continued long in the enjoyment of civil and political freedom, which has ever continued long in the enjoyment of believing that the advancement of literature always has been, and ever will be the means of developing more fully the rights of men; that the mind of every citizen in a republic is the common property of society, and constitutes the basis of its strength and happiness; it is therefore considered the peculiar duty of a free government, like ours, to encourage and extend the improvement and cultivation of the intellectual energies of the whole.-First School Law enacted in Illinois (1825).

Will anybody deny now that the government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest government in the world at this hour? And for this simple reason, that it is based on the will, and the good will, of an instructed people.-John Bright (1863).

Preach a crusade against ignorance. Establish and improve the law for educating the common people. The tax which is paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles, who will rise up among us, if we leave the people in ignorance.-Thomas Jefferson (1786).

One of the most essential needs of a democratic country, among all of its equalities, is equality of educational opportunity-William Pickens (1939).

Criticism

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they

are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own story without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand.-John Stuart Mill (1859).

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.— Thomas Jefferson (1801).

If this blessed old republic cannot rest upon the free and voluntary support and affection of the American people in time of war as well as in time of peace, if we cannot, as a people, be free to discuss the political problems which involve limb and life, even in time of war, our government rests upon a very brittle foundation.-William E. Borah (1917).

It is a mistake to suppose that the Supreme Court is either honored or helped by being spoken of as beyond criticism. On the contrary, the life and character of the justices should be the object of constant watchfulness by all, and its judgments subject to the freest criticism. The time is past in the history of the world when any living man or body of men can be set on a pedestal and decorated with a halo. True, many criticisms may be, like their authors, devoid of good taste, but better all sorts of criticisms than no criticism at all. The moving waters are full of life and health: only in the still waters is stagnation and death.— David Josiah Brewer (1888).

There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear; and there is damnation in the things that wicked men love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what winds are to oceans and malarial regions, which waft away the elements of disease, and bring new elements of health; and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.-Henry Ward Beecher.

This formidable censor of the public functionaries (free criticism) by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peacably, which must otherwise be done by revolution.-Thomas Jefferson (1823).

When you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. It therefore astonished me to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does, and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our counsels are confounded like those of the builders of Babel.— Benjamin Franklin (1787).

If seditious words proceed from levity, they are to be despised: If from folly, to be pitied: If from malice, to be forgiven.-Theodosius (391 A. D.).

Freedom of Expression

When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imaginary, their passions spend themselves in air, like gunpowder scattered upon the surface; but pent up by terrors, they work unseen, burst forth in a moment, and destroy everything in their course. Let reason be opposed to reason, and argument to argument, and every good government will be safe.—Thomas Erskine (1810).

All the great movements of thought in ancient and modern times have been nearly connected in time with government by discussion. Athens, Rome, the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, the communes and states-general of feudal Europe, have all had a special and peculiar quickening influence, which they owed to their freedom, and which states without their freedom had never communicated. And it has been at the time of great epochs of thought at the Peloponnesian War, at the fall of the Roman Republic, at the Reformation, at the French Revolution-that such liberty of speaking and thinking have produced their full effect.-Walter Bagehot (1873).

The sun could as easily be spared from the universe as free speech from the liberal institutions of society.-Socrates (399 B. C.).

Of all the miserable, unprofitable, inglorious wars, the worst is the war against words. Let men say just what they like. We have nothing to do with a man's words or a man's thoughts, except to put against them better words and better thoughts, and so to win in the great moral and intellectual duel that is always going on, and on which all progress depends.-Auberon Herbert (1893).

Liberty of speech inviteth and provoketh liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge.-Francis Bacon (1605).

Freedom of opinion, of speech, and of the press is our most valuable privilege, the very soul of republican institutions, the safeguard of all other rights. Nothing awakens and improves men so much as free communications of thoughts and feelings.

If men abandon the right of free discussion; if, awed by threats, they suppress their convictions; if rulers succeed in silencing every voice but that which approves them; if nothing reaches the people but what would lend support to men in power-farewell to liberty. The form of a free government may remain, but the life, the soul, the substance is filed.-William E. Channing.

Liberty is the nurse of all great wits. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.-John Milton (1665).

Without free speech no search for truth is possible; without free speech no discovery of truth is useful; without free speech progress is checked and the nations no longer march forward toward the nobler life which the future holds for man. Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.-Charles Bradlaugh (1879).

The best legacy I can leave my children is free speech, and the example of using it.-Algernon Sidney (1683).

I do not believe in a word that you say, but I will defend with my life, if need be, your right to say it.-Francois Voltaire (1759).

I say discuss all and expose all-I am for every topic openly;

I say there can be no safety for these States without innovators-without free tongues, and ears willing to hear the tongues;

And I announce as a glory of these States, that they respectfully listen to propositions, reforms, fresh views and doctrines, from successions of men and

women.

Each age with its own growth!-Walt Whitman (1882).

To limit the press is to insult the nation; to prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.

Should we to destroy error compel it to silence? No. How then? Let it talk on. Error, obscure of itself, is rejected by every sound understanding. If time have not given it credit, and it be not favored by government, it cannot bear the eye of examination. Reason will ultimately direct wherever it be freely exercised.-Claude A. Helvetius (1765).

When public discontents are allowed to vent themselves in reasoning and discourse, they subside into a calm; but their confinement in the bosom is apt to give them a fierce and deadly tincture.-Robert Hall (1793).

No matter whose the lips that would speak, they must be free and ungagged. Let us believe that the whole of truth can never do harm to the whole of virtue; and remember that in order to get the whole of truth you must allow every man, right or wrong, freely to utter his conscience, and protect him in so doing. Entire unshackled freedom for every man's life, no matter what his doctrine the safety of free discussion no matter how wide its range. The community which dares not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.-Wendell Phillips (1855).

You tell me that law is above freedom of utterance, and I reply that you can have no wise laws nor free enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people—and, alas, their folly with it. But, if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive. history of the race. It is the proof of man's kinship with God.

That is the

You say that freedom of utterance is not for the time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger. No one questions it in calm days, because it is not needed. And the reverse is true also: only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed it is most vital to justice. Peace is good. But if you are interested in peace through force and without free discussion-that is to say, free utterance decently and in order-your interest in justice is slight. And peace without justice is tyranny, no matter how you may sugar-coat it with expediency. This State today is in more danger from suppression than from violence, because in the end suppression leads to violence; indeed, is the child of suppression. Whoever pleads for justice helps to keep the peace, and whoever tramples upon the plea for justice, temperately made in the name of peace, only outrages peace and kills something fine in the heart of man which God put there when we got our manhood. When that is killed, brute meets brute on each side of the line. So, dear friend, put fear out of your heart. This Nation will survive, this