Freedom of thought
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Freedom of thought is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, independent of others' viewpoints.
"Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom & no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech", Benjamin Franklin, 1722
Bronze statue of Giordano Bruno in Rome
Freedom of speech
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Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right
Freedom of thought
…principle, and to enforce it so far as in him lay: ... The principle of liberty of conscience and the repudiation of religious coercion". However, freedom of expression can be limited through censorship, arrests, book burning, or propaganda, and this tends to discourage freedom of thought. Examples of effective campaigns…
Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Orator at London's Speakers' Corner, 1974
Title page of Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or List of Prohibited Books (Venice, 1564)
In Panegyricae orationes septem (1596), Henric van Cuyck, a Dutch Bishop, defended the need for censorship and argued that Johannes Gutenberg's printing press had resulted in a world infected by "pernicious lies"—so van Cuyck singled out the Talmud and the Qur'an, and the writings of Martin Luther, Jean Calvin and Erasmus of Rotterdam.