Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Charles Bradlaugh

Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful. Better a thousand fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people.

Abuse | Better | Day | Discovery | Free speech | Life | Life | People | Search | Speech | Truth | Discovery |

William Wordsworth

What need there is to be reserved in speech and temper all our thoughts with charity.

Charity | Need | Speech | Temper |

Bergen Baldwin Evans

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Action | Doubt | Freedom of speech | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Speech | Thought | Thought |

Bergen Baldwin Evans

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Action | Doubt | Freedom of speech | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Speech | Thought | Thought |

Bergen Baldwin Evans

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think.

Action | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Speech |

Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

Artful speech and insinuating looks rarely accompany true virtue.

Looks | Speech | Virtue | Virtue |

Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in their own way everywhere in the world. The third freedom is from want everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear everywhere in the world.

Fear | Freedom from fear | Freedom of speech | Freedom | God | Speech | World | Worship | God |

Francis Bacon

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words or in good order.

Discretion | Good | Order | Speech | Words |

George Herbert

More have repented speech than silence.

Silence | Speech |

Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first freedom is speech and expression – everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world-terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world-terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

Aggression | Fear | Freedom from fear | Freedom | Future | God | Life | Life | Means | Position | Speech | Time | Vision | Will | World | Worship | God |

George Washington

If any hesitate in his Words, help him not, nor Prompt him without [being asked]. Interrupt him not, nor Answer him till his Speech is ended.

Speech | Words |

Henry Ward Beecher

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.

Death | Disease | Free speech | Health | Love | Men | People | Speech |

Henry Steele Commager

Who are the really disloyal? Those who inflame racial hatreds, who sow religious and class dissensions. those who subvert the Constitution by violating the freedom of the ballot box. Those who make a mockery of majority rule by the use of the filibuster. Those who impair democracy by denying equal educational facilities. Those who frustrate justice by lynch law or by making a farce of jury trials. Those who deny freedom of speech and of the press and of assembly. Those who demand special favors against the interest of the commonwealth. Those who regard public office as a source of private gain. Those who exalt the military over the civil. Those who for selfish and private purposes stir up national antagonisms and expose the world to the ruin of war.

Democracy | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Justice | Law | Majority | Mockery | Office | Public | Regard | Rule | Speech | Trials | War | World |

Henry Steele Commager

The justification and the purpose of freedom of speech is not to indulge those who want to speak their minds. It is to prevent error and discover truth. There may be other ways of detecting error and discovering truth than that of free discussion, but so far we have not found them.

Discussion | Error | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Justification | Purpose | Purpose | Speech | Truth |

Howard Zinn

We should remember that the social utility of free speech is in giving us the informational base from which we can then make social choices. To refrain from making social choices is to say that beyond the issue of free speech we have no substantive values which we will express in action. If we do not discriminate in the actions we support or oppose, we cannot rectify the terrible injustices of the present world.

Action | Free speech | Giving | Present | Speech | Will | World |

James Montgomery

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire uttered and expressed, the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear, the upward glancing of an eye, when none but God are near. Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, prayer, the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high.

Desire | God | Prayer | Soul | Speech | God |

Joseph Campbell

The "morphogenic" relationship of eternity to time is not to be thought of as sequential. Moreover, eternity being by definition outside or beyond temporality, transcendent of all categories, whether of virtue or of reason (being and nonbeing, unity and multiplicity, love and justice, forgiveness and wrath), the term and concept "God" is itself but a metaphor of the unknowing mind, connotative, not only beyond itself, but beyond thought... metaphors are equivalent as alternative signs of the high mystical experience of an absorption of mortal appearance in immortal being; for which another historical figure of speech is the "End of the World."

Appearance | Eternity | Experience | Forgiveness | God | Justice | Love | Mind | Mortal | Mystical | Reason | Relationship | Speech | Thought | Time | Unity | Virtue | Virtue | World | Forgiveness | Thought |

Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis

No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Danger | Discussion | Education | Evil | Falsehood | Opportunity | Present | Silence | Speech | Time | Danger |