Ira Glasser

“The answer to bad speech is more speech, not enforced silence.”

“Once you start to give government the power to control speech, you have to be ready for that power to be used against you.”

“If you don't believe in freedom of speech for people you despise, you don't believe in it at all.”

“The essence of the First Amendment is that the government can't be trusted to decide what you should see and what you should hear.”

“The problem with a hate speech law is not that it's aimed at racists; it's that it's a speech law. All speech laws are ultimately used against the powerless.”

“There is no such thing as a temporary loss of civil liberties.”

“Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others.”

“The test of your commitment to free speech is whether you are willing to grant it to people you hate.”

“Free speech is not a knife that cuts slice by slice. It's a chainsaw.”

“The purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the powerless from the powerful.”

“The enemies of liberty are not the people who express hateful ideas. The enemies of liberty are the people who want to silence them.”

“Privacy is a bedrock of freedom. If you don't have privacy, you have a panopticon state.”

“Everybody is in favor of free speech for me. The test is whether you're in favor of free speech for people you can't stand.”

“The First Amendment is not a loophole. It is the core of our democracy.”

“The Skokie case was about one thing only: the right of the government to tell you what you can say and what you can't say.”