Right to Offend Quotes

Freedom of speech is freedom to offend.

Why shouldn't I be allowed to say stupid, outrageous things?

I just think political correctness is a limitation on our First Amendment freedoms.

I don't think any media has to feel obliged to show the cover of 'Charlie Hebdo.'

If there is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

As a young constitutional lawyer, I was put to the first amendment test when I was called on to defend racists and neo-Nazis. I really had no choice. Surely now we know that none of us do. Free speech is unequivocal, unpolitical, and indivisible.

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.

Muslims should be told quite clearly that our citizens have the legal right to criticize, lampoon, ridicule and mock Mohammed to their heart's content, in any way that they wish: that Islam and Muslims have no special claim to protection from the rough and tumble of post-Enlightenment intellectual, political and social life. If they cannot live in a society in which this is the case, they should go somewhere else..

I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment. It is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended.

Don’t let religious authorities decide what can or can't be published, …. free speech is vital for democracy, for social change, for the possibility of challenging what has been laid down by established authorities…. freedom only for those who do not offend, annoy, and irritate entrenched authorities - is no freedom at all.