Internet Speech Quotes & Sayings

As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from government intrusion. — Stewart Dalzell

Remember, 'governance' is a big word that includes human rights, freedom of speech, economic transactions on a worldwide basis - it touches everything. It's everywhere, and that's why Internet governance is Topic A in many corners. — Vint Cerf

Freedom of Speech has become Freedom of Stupidity on the internet. Some ignominious users should not be given a voice to comment at all. — Michael P. Naughton

I have worked on open Internet, speech, and entrepreneurship issues for years. — Marvin Ammori

We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. — Donald Trump

[Eric]Goldman [a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law] says back in the 1990s, courts began to confront the question of whether software code is a form of speech. Goldman says the answer to that question came in a case called Bernstein v. U.S. Department of Justice. Student Daniel Bernstein who created an encryption software called Snuffle. He wanted to put it on the Internet. The government tried to prevent him, using a law meant to stop the export of firearms and munitions. Goldman says the student argued his code was a form of speech. — Laura Sydell

Internet trolling wasn't just a symptom, it was a canary. Trolls tested the boundaries of how far society would allow racism, misogyny, and transphobia to be normalized. Would anyone do anything? Would anyone take action? Would anyone powerful take this seriously? The answer turned out to be no. Those of us on the receiving end begged for help, and were told to grow a thicker skin, because the Internet "isn't real life." Until, surprise, the Internet became president, and we as a society were so inured to hate speech - our boundaries had been so thoroughly obliterated and "political correctness" so stigmatized - that we had no defense. There — Lindy West

The deadliest bullshit is odorless, and transparent. — William Gibson

You have to organize, organize, organize, and build and build, and train and train, so that there is a permanent, vibrant structure of which people can be part. — Ralph E. Reed Jr.

Redefine the possible. — Stewart Brand

Where's there's money involved, there are no good guys. — Robert Glaser

The Internet is a far more speech-enhancing medium than print, the village green, or the mails. Because it would necessarily affect the Internet itself, the [Communications Decency Act] would necessarily reduce the speech available for adults on the medium. This is a constitutionally intolerable result. — Stewart Dalzell

The case for democracy is not esthetic. — George Will

Once you have speech, you don't have to wait for natural selection! If you want more strength, you build a stealth bomber; if you don't like bacteria, you invent penicillin; if you want to communicate faster, you invent the Internet. Once speech evolved, all of human life changed. — Tom Wolfe

Don't bother to argue anything on the Internet. And I mean, ANYTHING ... The most innocuous, innocent, harmless, basic topics will be misconstrued by people trying to deconstruct things down to the sub-atomic level and entirely miss the point ... Seriously. Keep peeling the onion and you get no onion. — Vera Nazarian

There are no bad haircuts in cyberspace. — Dave Barry

Everybody has a different Internet. — Bruce Sterling

Hatemongers like Media Matters take innocent statements like mine, Rush Limbaugh's, John Gibson's, and Bill O'Reilly's and make them offensive by posting them on the Internet, allowing the general public to hear words that were meant for people who already agree with us. Hey, Media Matters, you want to end offensive speech? Then stop recording it for people who would be offended. — Stephen Colbert

In 1789 the French rebelled and found an emperor. The Americans found their freedom from the British and enslaved the Africans. The Arab Spring bloomed and the military and the jihadists seized power. The internet gave us all the power of speech, and what did we discover? That victory goes to he who shouts the loudest, and that reason does not sell. — Claire North

If you're having a conversation with someone in speech, and it's not being tape-recorded, you can change your opinion, but on the Internet, it's not like that. On the Internet it's almost as if everything you say were being tape-recorded. You can't say, I changed my mind. — Sherry Turkle

The Internet is a powerful example of free speech and the free market in action; it is curious that the Net has alarmed the lawmakers of a nation founded on those principles. — Denise Caruso

The Internet is transient. Information can be removed with a couple of mouse-clicks; it is an Orwellian dream. We have been advised, by people who claim to know about these things, that there is no point in protesting against a social network. Whoever owns the network will run it as they see fit, normally to maximize their profit margin. Members who dispute the rules will simply be thrown out. The Terms of Use are written so as not to allow them any recourse. — G.R. Reader

Many people who have an interest in politics feel they should proclaim - loudly, and at any given time - what their views are and why the "other side" is wrong. These proclamations appear in many forms, from scathing letters to the editor to frothing-at-the-mouth comments on blogs and internet videos. Although expression and debate are vital parts of policymaking, political speech should be used to push forward ideas that will help others. — Victoria Stoklasa

Her parents didn't understand that braille meant big clunky books that marked you as different, while audiobooks live invisibly on your phone and text-to-speech gave you the whole damn internet. — Scott Westerfeld

There is stupid. And then there is cyberstupid. — Michael Grunwald

It's not Big Brother that we now have to be afraid of, but Big Browser. — Eliot Spitzer

I think the reality is that copyright law has for a very long time been a tiny little part of American jurisprudence, far removed from traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, and that made sense before the Internet. Now there is an unavoidable link between First Amendment interests and the scope of copyright law. The legal system is recognizing for the first time the extraordinary expanse of copyright regulation and its regulation of ordinary free-speech activities. — Lawrence Lessig

There's a negative connotation to internet trolls, but at the same time this is becoming mainstream. This kind of speech pattern, the way people speak, this is common on the internet. — Rush Limbaugh

While we generally believe in free speech and giving everyone as much ability to speak as possible, in practice there are lots of barriers to that, whether it's legal restrictions, technological restrictions or you can't share what you want if you don't have access to the internet. — Mark Zuckerberg

I like something with 'vice' in it. — Ted Turner

So many letters to the editor and comments on the Internet have this same tone of thrilled vindication: these are people who have been vigilantly on the lookout for something to be offended by, and found it. — Tim Kreider

While the Internet is censored in China, the censorship is allowing a level of speech to take place that's unprecedented. — Ethan Zuckerman

The Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide conversation. The government may not, through the , interrupt that conversation ... As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion ... The government, therefore, implicitly asks this court to limit both the amount of speech on the Internet and the availability of that speech. This argument is profoundly repugnant to First Amendment principles. — Stewart Dalzell

Equally, the Internet interprets attempts at proprietary control as threats and mobilizes to defeat them. — Eric S. Raymond

It is no exaggeration to conclude that the Internet has achieved, and continues to achieve, the most participatory marketplace of mass speech that this country - and indeed the world - has yet seen. — George Will

The quintessential exercise of free speech in a culture supposedly built on that concept and dedicated to it, the Internet's development is as historically important to humanity perhaps even more so as Gutenberg 's invention of the printing press. — L. Neil Smith

The more you've got, the shorter it feels. — John Perry Barlow

Any government which fears freedom of speech and expression, should fear the internet more. — Robert Black

I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves. — Peggy Noonan

People depend on the Open Internet to connect and communicate with each other freely. Voters need it to inform themselves before casting ballots. Without prompt corrective action by the Commission to reclassify broadband, this awful ruling will serve as a sorry memorial to the corporate abrogation of free speech. — Michael Copps

Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects. — Stewart Dalzell

Congress created a safe harbor for defamation in 1996 and for copyright in 1998. Both safe harbors were designed to ensure that the Internet would remain a participatory medium of speech. — Marvin Ammori

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. — Edward Snowden

The thing I have come to find astonishing is that people from all political sides routinely say that the Internet has to be the model of free speech and freedom. — Beeban Kidron

Potentially, anyone writing on the Web can reach a global audience. In practice, hardly anyone ever does. — Nick Cohen

The Internet's like one big bathroom wall with a lot of people who anonymously can say really mean things. It's fine, I believe in freedom of speech and I think people should think what they want, but I don't care to hear it. — Zooey Deschanel

One of the curious aspects of the Twenty-First Century was the great delusion amongst many people, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, that freedom of speech and freedom of expression were best exercised on technological platforms owned by corporations dedicated to making as much money as possible. — Jarett Kobek

With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets. — Orson Scott Card

Now is the time to draw a clean, clear, bright line and say if you are engaging in speech over the Internet you do not have to check with your lawyer or your accountant. You are a free American, and you have the opportunity to engage in free speech over the Internet. — John Doolittle

I don't understand why they call it public broadcasting. As far as I am concerned, there's nothing public about it; it's an elitist enterprise. 'Rush Limbaugh' is public broadcasting. — Newt Gingrich

Net neutrality was essential for our economy; it was essential to preserve freedom and openness, both for economic reasons and free speech reasons, and the government had a role in ensuring that Internet freedom was protected. — Julius Genachowski