You ask, What makes it worth defending? and the only answer I can give is this: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you’re going to have to stand up for stuff you don’t believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don’t, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person’s obscenity is another person’s art. Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Blog entry (2008-12-01), “Why defend freedom of icky speech?”
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Quotations about:
distaste
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Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
Letter (1962-03-02) to Pres. John Kennedy
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Quoted in Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, ch. 15 (1969). On the need to seek a settlement with Hanoi over the growing conflict in Viet Nam.
"Politics is the art of the possible" was a comment by Otto von Bismarck.
