Apr 2, 2014

H.L. Mencken on free speech

I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. [...] Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.

~ Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) in 1948 interview with Donald H. Kirkley for the Library of Congress

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