Mike Godwin Quotes

Mike Godwin delivers blunt, witty insight into how online debates tend to drift toward Nazi analogies.

12 quotes

  1. I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 or 20 years from now she will come to me and say, 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'.

  2. As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

  3. And whenever you think about the First Amendment, the first thing you should remember is that it was designed by the Framers of the Constitution to protect offensive speech and offensive speakers. After all, no one ever tries to ban the other kind.

  4. If you mention Adolf Hitler or Nazis within a discussion thread, you've automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in.

  5. The decisions we make about the Internet don't affect just the Internet – they are answers to basic questions about the relationship each citizen has to the government and about the extent to which we trust one another with the full range of fundamental rights granted by the Constitution.

  6. Fertilizer played a greater role in this case than computers.

  7. The remedy for the abuse of free speech is more speech.

  8. The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, because nobody ever tries to ban the other kind.

  9. Striking a balance in favor of individual rights has always been the right decision for us and that it remains so even when technology gives us new ways to exercise those rights. Individual liberty has never weakened us; freedom of speech, enhanced by the Net, will only make us stronger.

  10. Exploring and understanding the Net is an ongoing process. Cyberspace never sits still; it evolves as fast as society itself. Only if we fight to preserve our freedom of speech on the Net will we ensure our ability to keep up with both the Net and society.

  11. I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.

  12. In short, individual freedom of speech leads to a stronger society. But knowing that principle is not enough. You have to know how to put it to use on the Net.