"I want to suggest to you that citizens of free societies, democracies, do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow-citizens' opinions, even their most cherished beliefs. In free societies, you must have free play of ideas. There must be argument, and it must be impassioned and untrammeled. A free society is not a calm and eventless place--that is the kind of static, dead society dictators try to create. Free societies are dynamic, noisy, turbulent, and full of radical disagreements. Skepticism and freedom are indissolubly linked..."
Salman Rushdie, 1996
"Farming Ostriches", originally delivered as a keynote address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, from Step Across This Line (Random House, NY: 2002)
