With the possible exception of life and personal property, there is nothing more valuable and prized than freedom of speech of a person. Freedom of speech means: the freedom of one to say or write with words anything one wants and chooses to say. It is not a freedom to say only neutral things, which offend no one, it is not a freedom to say only loyal opinions and agree with authorities on everything they might do or say. The freedom of speech means freedom to say anything. Even if everybody else on the whole planet is offended by it and even if it contradicts all of the official beliefs and authority’s statements. It is a fundamental principle that provides people with the right to speak their thoughts in public. The freedom of press is the similar concept, but applied to press.
When one is speaking or writing – one is expressing her or his thoughts. So, any restriction of speech is a restriction of thought. And ability to think is one of the main and the most important aspects of existence of the humans. Such a thing should not be violated or restricted, because thinking is also a mean for a person to determine her or his behavior and also to determine the correct action to take in a certain situations. The thing is that when someone thinks about choices they make – one tends to dismiss thoughts of something they know is impossible. One won’t spend much time considering doing what one knows can not be done.
In other words - any restriction on what one may or may not say means there is no point in thinking about those things, about which one would otherwise want to speak, if that speech were not prohibited. Why one should think about something that can never be said? Thus, when speech is restricted, people know they cannot freely speak out their thoughts and so they stop to think about certain things and blindly follow the lead of the oppressive authorities, which is not always righteous and correct.