"Thought is more than a right -..." - Quote by Victor Hugo
Thought is more than a right - it is the very breath of man. Whoever fetters thought attacks man himself. To speak, to write, to publish, are things, so far as the right is concerned, absolutely identical. They are the ever-enlarging circles of intelligence in action; they are the sonorous waves of thought.
More by Victor Hugo
“A poet is a world enclosed in a man.”
“Because a fact seems strange to you, you conclude that it is not one. ... All science, however, commences by being strange. Science is successive. It goes from one wonder to another. It mounts by a ladder. The science of to-day would seem extravagant to the science of a former time. Ptolemy would believe Newton mad.”
“Stupidity talks, vanity acts.”
More on Thought
“It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and text of my mind.”
“He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.”
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem, - a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
More on Freedom
“The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike...Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.”
“Fashion condemns us to many follies, the greatest is to make oneself its slave.”
“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”