Albert Wong

“I want to suggest to you that citizens of free societies, democracies, do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow-citizen's opinions, even their most cherished beliefs. In free societies, you must have the free play of ideas. There must be argument, and it must be impassioned and untrammeled. A free society is not calm and eventless place - that is the kind of static, dead society dictators try to create. Free societies are dynamic, noisy, turbulent, and full of radical disagreements. Skepticism and freedom are indissolubly linked; and it is the skepticism of journalists, their show-me, prove-it unwillingness to be impressed, that is perhaps their most important contribution to the freedom of the free world. It is the disrespect of journalists-for power, for orthodoxies, for party lines, for ideologies, for vanity, for arrogance, for folly, for pretension, for corruption, for stupidity, maybe even for editors-that I would like to celebrate...and that I urge you all, in freedom's name, to preserve.”
― Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002

“Man can affect his own development and that of his surroundings only so far as he has a clear view of what the possibilities of action are open to him. To do this he has to understand the historical situation in which he finds himself: and once he does this, then he can play an active part in modifying that situation.
The man of action is the true philosopher: and the philosopher must of necessity be a man of action.”
― Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince & Other Writings