Hitchens on Free Speech - Must Watch
This monologue by Christopher Hitchens in the Free Speech debate at the University of Toronto in 2006 stands, in my opinion, as one of his greatest moments. It is a must-watch speech and could be considered a primer on the subject. I find myself going back to it often. Freedom of speech is the foundation of modern western society from which all other rights and freedoms follow and therefore deserves the most vigilant protection.
Some of my favorite quotes of the important ideas expressed by Hitchens in this video:
- "It's not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard. It is the right of everyone in the audience to listen and to hear. And every time you silence somebody, you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something."
- "Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus and the feeling that whatever you think, you're bound to be okay because you're in the safely moral majority."
- "Every time you violate or propose to violate the free speech of someone else, you in potentia, your making a rod for your own back."
- "It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call and one has to suspect the motives of those who do so, in particular the motives of those who are determined to be offended."
- "You're giving away what's most precious in your own society and you're giving it away without a fight and you're even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it."