Since bodies like the Communist Party are in fact an announcement that some lives at least are shaped inadequately by the laws of a régime like our own, suppression seems to me an indefensible way of meeting that announcement.

Force is never a reply to argument; and until argument itself seeks force as the expression of its principle, it is only by argument that it can justifiably be countered.

It is therefore assumed by many that it is the business of the state actively to discourage such conduct, even to the point, if necessary, of making its most innocuous expression illegal.

I do not find it easy to accept any single principle that is obvious and straightforward as applicable to the very complex problems we encounter in this realm.

Neither the fact that a mode of conduct may be harmful in excess, nor the fact that, whether harmful or no, society dislikes it, seems to me in itself a just ground for its suppression by the law.

I am prepared, for example, to make it illegal to keep a gaming-house; but I am not prepared to legislate against a social game of bridge played for money in a private house.

Conduct must be punished or prohibited when it is harmful in itself or in the excess in which it touches society before we ought to seek access to the clumsy machinery of the law.

For we cannot suppress all modes of conduct in which excess does harm.

In most cases, we have to leave the individual free to judge at what point excess is a fact.

Over-eating does great harm, but no one would propose legislation against over-eating.

No one is harmed, for instance, by a moderate indulgence in alcoholic liquor; but since drunkenness is harmful both to the individual and society, the state, it is said, is justified in prohibiting the manufacture or sale of alcoholic…

Many motorists sacrifice their lives to their motor-car, especially in America; but no one would propose legislation against an undue indulgence in motoring.

False social standards result from our excessive adulation of film-stars and athletes; but we should obviously be merely foolish if we legislated against the publicity which makes for that excessive adulation.

What can possibly be gained by an attempt to suppress that philosophy by an imprisonment of its members is quite beyond my understanding.

My point is that men are always entitled to form voluntary associations for the expression of grievance, and for the propagation of ideas which, as they think, will remedy what they believe to be wrong.

But governments would do well to remember, what they are too prone to forget, that they do not remove grievance, however ill-conceived, by suppressing it.

And if they are allowed to associate violent opinion with actual violence, there are few follies upon which they cannot be persuaded to embark.

The persecution of opinion grows by what it feeds on.

Every social order is ardently upheld by fanatics who are eager to make dissent from their view a crime.

Experience makes it painfully clear that special tribunals are simply special methods for securing a conviction.

We have to remember that it always runs the risk of undermining character by a limitation of responsibility.

Men are made not by being safeguarded against temptation but by being able to triumph over it.

It would be impossible to forbid the use of cheques because some people succumb to the habit of embezzlement.

There is a clear case for forbidding the sale of noxious drugs like heroin or cocaine except under severe restrictions, because it is clear that in themselves their consumption is bound to harm the recipient.

But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly aristocratic.