Free Speech

One wonders if the first amendment could flourish in a climate of serious degeneration in the morality of the people. It may be true that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah had absolute free speech, but it is also probably true that they had nothing worth saying, preoccupied as they were with various sins. Those surfeited in sensualism produce sounds all right, but not necessarily the informed speech John Stuart Mill and our Founding Fathers had in mind. (Fourth of July Celebration, Midway, Utah, July 4, 1991.)

An otherwise permissive society, which tolerates almost everything, usually will not tolerate speech that challenges its iniquity. Evil is always intolerantly preoccupied with its own perpetuation. (That Ye May Believe, pp. 74-75.)


(Cory H. Maxwell, ed., The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1997], 131.)