Why Freedom Matters

Capa
National Civil Liberties Bureau, 1919 - 21 páginas
 

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Passagens conhecidas

Página 14 - And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple ; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter ? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.
Página 5 - ... to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty...
Página 5 - The last right we shall mention regards the freedom of the press. The importance of this consists, besides the advancement of truth, science, morality, and arts in general, in its diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government...
Página 5 - ... that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order...
Página 14 - ... scattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please; only that he may try the matter by dint of argument, for his opponents then to...
Página 24 - ... \^Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil : there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides ; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood...
Página 5 - If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to 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.
Página 21 - 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.
Página 9 - Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
Página 21 - First : The opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it of course deny its truth ; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion because they are sure it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

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