Speech Quotes - page 66
Now he's back to declaring himself a maverick, but it's not clear what that means. If he gains the presidency, is he going to rebel against the base he's now depending on to get him elected? (Hence his selection of running mate Sarah Palin.) Campaigns matter. If he means "shaking up the system" (which is not the same thing), opposing earmarks doesn't cut it. McCain's recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man. In fact, it's not clear who he is.
John McCain
I welcome Senator McCain's important statement on President Reagan's legacy and the need to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons. In my speech in Prague, I outlined my agenda for keeping the American people safe from the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, and I am grateful to John McCain for his leadership on these critical issues. I have outlined an ambitious strategy for promoting arms control and preventing nuclear terrorism and proliferation, which is already bearing fruit. I look forward to working with Senator McCain and the entire Congress to ensure that we accomplish these goals together for the American people and the security of the entire planet.
John McCain
The irony is that McCain had the best shot of any Republican candidate to win the election, despite his unpopularity with the party base. Given his record, he was better-positioned than any other Republican to overcome his association with the Bush administration. Simply put, however, he never did this. There is much to admire in McCain. Deep down, he is an honorable, principled man who has served his country for the majority of his life. His maverick label has been tarnished, fairly or not, but he has reached across the aisle on big issues on multiple occasions. True, he did and said things during this campaign that go against the convictions that many people believe he holds true. But it was an exhausting campaign, and things are always said that are regretted later by both sides. He was gracious in his concession speech - probably the best speech he's given in the entire campaign - and he deserves our respect.
John McCain
Money is property; it is not speech. Speech has the power to inspire volunteers to perform a multitude of tasks on a campaign trail, on a battleground, or even on a football field. Money, meanwhile, has the power to pay hired laborers to perform the same tasks. It does not follow, however, that the First Amendment provides the same measure of protection to the use of money to accomplish such goals as it provides to the use of ideas to achieve the same results.
John Paul Stevens
They have tried to hang me on an isolated word, taken out of context from my whole speech ... I did not say anything against the Islamic civilization... It's the work of some people in the Italian leftist press who wanted to tarnish my image and destroy my long-standing relations with Arabs and Muslims.
Silvio Berlusconi
If a man makes the press utter atrocious things he becomes as answerable for them as if he had uttered them by word of mouth. Mr. Jefferson has said in his inaugural speech, that "error of opinion might be tolerated, when reason was left free to combat it." This is sound philosophy in cases of error. But there is a difference between error and licentiousness.
Thomas Paine
I was brought up from my earliest youth to believe in the enormous importance of peace. I have often heard my father, the late Lord Salisbury, say that, though he did not see how it was possible under the then existing circumstances to avoid wars altogether, yet he had never been able to satisfy himself that they were in principle morally defensible.
Indeed, particularly in the latter part of his life, he made more than one speech in which he expressed the hope that, by some international combination, wars could in the future be prevented. He did not hesitate to express his belief that some such organization as we have since then attempted and erected in the League of Nations might furnish the solution of what he conceived to be the terrific evil of war.
Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
The Labour Party cannot make up its mind whether to treat the Liberal plan as a freak or to claim its paternity. Mr. Thomas has said it is an absurd abortion, but Mr. Henderson says it is the child of the Labour Party. Mr. MacDonald, as usual tries to have it both ways. He says-often in the same speech-"This is a stunted thing." Then looking at it fondly, he says, "This is my child."
David Lloyd George
Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart's content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. The party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views.
Vladimir Lenin
It must never be forgotten, however, that the Bill of Rights was the child of the Enlightenment. Back of the guarantee of free speech lay faith in the power of an appeal to reason by all the peaceful means for gaining access to the mind. It was in order to avert force and explosions due to restrictions upon rational modes of communication that the guarantee of free speech was given a generous scope. But utterance in a context of violence can lose its significance as an appeal to reason and become part of an instrument of force. Such utterance was not meant to be sheltered by the Constitution.
Felix Frankfurter
Political correctness is America's newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people's language with strict codes and rigid rules. I'm not sure that's the way to fight discrimination. I'm not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech.
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These allegedly well-intentioned people have strayed so far from reality that it will not be a surprise for me to someday hear a rape victim referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient.
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Political correctness cripples discourse, creates ugly language and is generally stupid.
George Carlin
Let me start off by admitting that I am quite nervous about giving this speech for a couple of reasons. First, because I am speaking at the distinguished Silliman University where my grandfather, John Gokongwei Sr., went to high school. I never had the chance to meet him since he passed away when my father was only thirteen. But I am very honored to be speaking on the hallowed and historic grounds where he went to school more than 80 years ago. The other reason I am nervous is because I am speaking to the 2007 graduating class of Silliman. Given your Sillimanian pedigree, the world has high expectations of you.
David Sutherland Hibbard
In the past week, Ye has spread some of the most vile and age-old stereotypes about Jews to his hundreds of millions of followers.
There should be no place for this kind of hate in our public discourse.
We support every entertainer's right to free speech, but no one has a free pass to target and demonize a minority group with such malice.
We are gravely concerned about the impact of Ye's statements - and how they will affect his fans, particularly young people.
At the same time, we hope this can be a moment that ultimately creates better awareness about the dangers of antisemitism for Ye, his fans, and other entertainers.
We remain open to dialogue with him about how harmful and fallacious his comments are.
Kanye West
Wittgenstein's appeal lies in the fact that he provides a strange kind of vindication of romanticism, of conceptual Gemeinschaft, of custom-based concepts rather than statute-seeking Reform, and that he does so through a very general theory of meaning, rather than from the premisses habitually used for this purpose. Because there is no unique formal notation valid for all speech, each and every culture is vindicated. One never knew that could be done - and so quickly too! It is that above all which endows his philosophy with such a capacity to attract and to repel. His mystique of consensual custom denies that anything can sit in judgment of our concepts, that some may be more rational and others less so. So all of them are in order and have nothing to fear from philosophy, as indeed he insists. This is a fairly mild form of irrationalism, invoking no fierce dark Gods, merely a consensual community. It is the Soft Porn of Irrationalism.
Ernest Gellner
America, America, please hear us when we call
You got hip-hop, be-bop, hustle and bustle
You got Atticus Finch
You got Jane Russell
You got freedom of speech
You got great beaches, wildernesses and malls
Don't let the might, the Christian right, fuck it all up
For you and the rest of the world.
Roger Waters
When the political history of the Blair era is written, it may well be concluded that the most effective conservative opposition came not from politicians, but journalists. It often seems that the charge against New Labour is led by the Telegraph and Spectator, by Charles Moore and Boris Johnson, or from some Murdoch journalists, rather than by William Hague. So perhaps it should not comes [sic] as a complete surprise that the most sustained, internally logical and powerful attack on Tony Blair and all his works should be a polemic by a right-wing journalist, Peter Hitchens, rather than a Tory pamhlet or an MP's speech. ...
On much of this agenda, Hitchens is simply out of time. ... [T]he idea of a widespread return to a belief in literal damnation, to public hostility towards homosexuals and the shaming of single mothers, seems utterly implausible.
Peter Hitchens
The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle...yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.
William S. Burroughs
