Intellectual freedom is essential to human society — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture. But freedom of thought is under a triple threat in modern society—from the deliberate opium of mass culture, from cowardly, egotistic, and philistine ideologies, and from the ossified dogmatism of a bureaucratic oligarchy and its favorite weapon, ideological censorship. Therefore, freedom of thought requires the defense of all thinking and honest people.

Without Freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom;and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.

Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know.

Islam cannot leave certain spheres of life strictly to the individual, any action which is likely to prejudice the healthy growth of Muslim society will have to be severely prohibited. We do not believe in unrestricted freedom to bring about a lowering of human standards, of spiritual values of allegiance to our common idealism. Anything which brings in germs of decay and degeneration in our physical, moral or spiritual life will have to be ruthlessly curbed and steps will have to be taken that loose talk and loose thinking are not allowed to exist. This does not mean censorship but an enlightened and sympathetic censorship with an appeal to the highest tribunal in the land.

A state, in order to be truly Islamic, must arrange the affairs of the community in such a way that every individual, man and woman, shall enjoy that minimum of material well-being without which there can be no human dignity, no real freedom and, in the last resort, no spiritual progress.

Freedom of thought ,…freedom of thought is essential to human progress. If we stop freedom of thought, we stop progress in our world. Because of this it is so important that we teach our children, our young people, the importance of freedom of thought. Freedom of thought begins with the right to ask questions. And this right our people in Burma have not had for so long that some of our young people do not quite know how to ask questions. One of the tasks we have set ourselves, in my party, the National League for Democracy is to teach our people to ask questions, not to accept everything that is done to them without asking why.

Of that freedom [of thought and speech] one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

In Islam, democracy is included and people are free in Islam, both in expressing their opinions and their actions, until there is no conspiracy and they don't bring up ideas which would deviate Iranian generation.

It is not the intention of Islam to force its beliefs on people, but Islam is not merely ‘belief’. As we have pointed out, Islam is a declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men. Thus it strives from the beginning to abolish all those systems and governments which are based on the rule of man over men and the servitude of one human being to another. When Islam releases people from this political pressure and presents to them its spiritual message, appealing to their reason, it gives them complete freedom to accept or not to accept its beliefs.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, and the heart, and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it is being challenged in many different ways. […] Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together.

In a free state there should be freedom of speech and thought.

At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.

Surely there is not a Muslim in the world who does not aspire to freedom in principle.