If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.

If you ask someone whether our Constitutional rights are being flushed down the porcelain oubliette, and their response is, "If I answer that honestly they'll arrest me," then you already have your answer.

I shouldn't make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum.

If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?

I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it.

If you're not allowed to say something, I have a suspicion that not only should you be allowed to say it, but that it is simply true.

Say too soon what you think and you will say what everyone else thinks.

I am ready to confess that I am keyed up to a pretty high tension, and the only thing I am afraid of is that I will say just what I think, which would be unwise, no doubt.

When was the last time you stopped yourself from saying something you believed to be true for fear of being punished or criticized for saying it? If you live in America, it probably hasn’t been long.

If you have to go to jail for denouncing corruption, I'm going to go.

We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.

No, I won't leave the world — I'll enter a lunatic asylum and see if the profundity of insanity reveals to me the riddles of life. Idiot, why didn't I do that long ago, why has it taken me so long to understand what it means when the Indians honour the insane, step aside for them? Yes, a lunatic asylum — don't you think I may end up there?

Personally I suspect that I am highly unlikely to be arrested for whatever laws exist to contain free expression, because of the undoubtedly privileged position that is afforded to those of a high public profile. So my concerns are less for myself, and more for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile. Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse 'gay'. Or the teenager arrested for calling the Church of Scientology a 'cult'. Or the café owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen.

What they think they ought to think is bad enough, Lord knows; but what they really think would break up the whole show. Do you suppose it would be really agreeable if I were to come out now with what I really think?