Right to Criticize Quotes

Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

I believe in freedom of speech, but I believe we should also have the right to comment on freedom of speech.

The 1st Amendment does not mandate that the press be accurate.

The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the press, by the pen, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert upon all political institutions ... [is] a right as clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without is we must fall at once into despotism and anarchy.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

The rights of free speech and free press do not carry with them the right to advocate the right to advocate the destruction of the very government that protects the freedom of an individual to express his views.

No man ought to be hindered saying or writing what he pleases on the conduct of those who undertake the management of national affairs, in which all are concerned, and therefore have the right to inquire, and to publish their suspicions concerning them. For if you punish the slanderer, you deter the fair inquirer.

In a democracy, expressing disagreement with the government’s actions does not amount to sedition or insurrection—it is, and must remain, protected speech.

Individuals have the right to pick and choose which expressions to condemn, which to praise and which to say nothing about. Governments, however, must remain neutral as to the content of expression. And governments must protect the rights of all to express even the most despicable of views.

I'd like to see people get sued if they wrote a bad review of my movie. If you can't say something nice, you shouldn't say anything at all.

Nowhere does our Constitution say we cannot say something about another's religion. Nowhere does our Constitution say we cannot say anything that offends someone.

The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.

The fact that we're protected under that Constitution in exercising the right of free speech, it's a wonderful thing. You've got to come from somewhere else to realize how valuable it is.

Every person may freely speak, write, and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty; and in all trials for libel, both civil and criminal, the truth, when published with good motives and for justifiable ends, shall be a sufficient defense

If you're not going to offend somebody you don't need the First Amendment.

We hold that the greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong, that in the exercise thereof people have an inviolable right to express their unbridled thoughts on all topics and personalities, being liable only for the abuse of that right.

No free subject ought to be under the least restraint in respect to accusing the greatest, so long as his accusation strikes only at the political conduct of the accused: his private we have no right to meddle with