Intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access of all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored. ~ American Library Association
Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel
Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions. ~ Alan Barth
The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds. ~ Isaiah Berlin
A free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought. ~ Leon Blum
For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments. ~ Noam Chomsky
To be nobody but yourself -- in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you like everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. ~ e. e. cummings
Humanity's most valuable assets have been the non-conformists. Were it not for the non-conformists, he who refuses to be satisfied to go along with the continuance of things as they are, and insists upon attempting to find new ways of bettering things, the world would have known little progress, indeed. ~ Josiah William Gitt
Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism. ~ Herman Hesse
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
Either you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. ~ Eugene Ionesco
Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet. ~ Jamaica Kincaid
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything -- and one's last is to come to terms with everything. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg