‘Lived experience’ is what we used to call ‘anecdotal evidence’, a fallacious form of reasoning that has misled many into believing that ours is an essentially oppressive society, overrun by fascists and undergirded by white supremacy.

An overdiagnostic culture has reframed distress and emotional pain as forms of mental illness, rather than aspects of a healthy human existence. To feel upset is not an aberration; it is a sign that we are alive.

speech is integral to the human spirit and hardly comparable with guns, knives and poison.

Once artists begin tailoring their work in accordance with how they sense it will be received, their craft is bound to deteriorate.

To force citizens to speak falsehoods as though they were the truth is a form of psychological control common to dictatorships.

once liberty is relinquished, it is difficult to recover.

Defending free speech means defending the rights of those whose speech we despise. Uncontroversial ideas require no such protection.

do not protect controversial speech for its content, but rather the principle it represents.

to make the leap from the natural revulsion we experience at certain alternative worldviews to actively silencing them is to surrender to the authoritarian tendency.