It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
The United States is a land of free speech. Nowhere is speech freer - not even here where we sedulously cultivate it even in its most repulsive form.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the value of free speech, even when it encompasses distasteful opinions.
Winston Churchill's quote reflects the fundamental principle of freedom of expression in the United States, highlighting that this nation guarantees the right to speak freely, irrespective of the content of that speech. The reference to cultivating free speech in its most 'repulsive form' underscores the importance of protecting all speech, not just that which is agreeable or popular, as a cornerstone of democracy and individual liberties.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about censorship, one might quote Churchill to highlight the importance of allowing all forms of speech, even those that are controversial.
More from Winston Churchill
All quotes βThe United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there's no limit to the power it can generate.
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Similar quotes
The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.
Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.
That is the strangeness of language: it crosses the boundaries of the body, is at once inside and outside, and it sometimes happens that we don't notice the threshold has been crossed.
Once you understand non-self, then the burden of life is gone. You'll be at peace with the world. When we see beyond self, we no longer cling to happiness and we can truly be happy. Learn to let go without struggle, simply let go, to be just as you are - no holding on, no attachment, free.
When I die, I shall soar with angels, and when I die to the angels, what I shall become you cannot imagine.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.