Mark Twain on free speech:

'As an active privilege, it ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By the common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished, free speech always - when committed. Which is seldom... There is justification for this reluctance to utter unpopular opinions: the cost of utterance is too heavy...

'... I feel it every week or two when I want to print something that a fine discretion tells me I mustn't. Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take to the pen and pour them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside..'

- from Mark Twin's "The Priviledge of the Grave"

Thanks to this week's The New Yorker for this reminder.