He considers the calm of a city street a thing as inevitable as the calm of a forest clearing, whereas it is only kept in peace by a sustained stretch and effort similar to that which keeps up a battle or a fencing match.

Just as we forget where we stand in relation to natural phenomena, so we forget it in relation to social phenomena.

We forget that the earth is a star, and we forget that free speech is a paradox.
It is not by any means self-evident upon the face of it that an institution like the liberty of speech is right or just.

It is not natural or obvious to let a man utter follies and abominations which you believe to be bad for mankind any more than it is natural or obvious to let a man dig up a part of the public road, or infect half a town with typhoid fever.

The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it is very much better at all costs to hear every one's account of it, is a theory which has been justified upon the whole by experiment, but which remains a very daring and even a very surprising theory.