Chilling Effect Quotes

Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it.

Everyone needs to stop and breathe and look at how redefining marriage will have a hugely chilling effect on religious liberty in America.

The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as "Communists" or "Fascists" by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.

What seems fair enough against a squalid huckster of bad liquor may take on a different face, if used by a government determined to suppress political opposition under the guise of sedition

It is well known that Turkey has more imprisoned journalists than any other country, but as a result of the chilling effect of these prosecutions on the press, many stories never make the news.

People back down because the libel system is so utterly hostile to journalists, bloggers, scientists. The smart thing is not to fight.

The threat or fear of violence should not become an excuse or justification for restricting freedom of speech.

When people fear surveillance, whether it exists or not, they grow afraid to speak their minds and hearts freely to their government or to anyone else.

Some of the press who speak loudly about the freedom of the press are themselves the enemies of freedom. Countless people dare not say a thing because they know it will be picked up and made a song of by the press. That limits freedom.

Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.

I have no problem with free speech, but free speech and then silencing your opposition - boy, I have a problem with that.

It’s one of the basics of librarianship, to respect privacy, to understand that what people read isn’t necessarily what they believe, and to give them the ability to come in and find information without any chilling effect.

A Democratic congressman said that he worries that the IRS scandal might have a chilling effect on the IRA and that they might be afraid to audit people. So finally some good is coming out of all of this.

There is no functional difference between censorship and the threat of censorship.

As to the evil which results from censorship, it is impossible to measure it, because it is impossible to tell where it ends.

Unmeasured vituperation, employed on the side of prevailing opinion, really does deter people from expressing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who express them.

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.

Think about it: If you were publicly branded a racist on an issue of public debate, might you not next time hesitate to speak out, write your elected representatives or go to a meeting? That's a chilling effect - and undermines the First Amendment.

When you have mass surveillance, it's impossible to meet the intent of the First Amendment because reporters can't talk to sources because sources are afraid to talk.

To the extent that tenure supports academic freedom, I support tenure. I want no person or system to have any power, real or apparent, to chill academic freedom.

The censor's sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.

Let us not compare Edward Snowden's situation with that of Chelsea Manning or Jeremy Hammond, who is also imprisoned in the United States. As a result of WikiLeaks' hard work, Edward Snowden has political asylum, has travel documents, lives with his girlfriend, goes to the ballet and earns substantial speaking fees. Edward Snowden is essentially free and happy. That is no coincidence. It was my strategy to undo the chilling effect of the 35 year Manning sentence and it has worked.

Colder by the hour, more dead with every breath.

The sky was a cold iron-grey, like the underside of a shield. A sharp breeze lifted the hems of skirts and rattled the leaves on the immature trees; a spiteful, chill wind that sought out your weakest places, the nape of your neck and your knees, and which denied you the comfort of dreaming, of retreating a little from reality.

Science casts a long black shadow back over who we think we are, and where it falls the temperature falls with it. Its touch is chilly and unforgiving.