The Tongue Is a Fire
Ferdinand Mount: The Trouble with Free Speech, 22 May 2025
What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea
by Fara Dabhoiwala.
Allen Lane, 472 pp., £30, March,978 0 241 34747 8 Show More
by Fara Dabhoiwala.
Allen Lane, 472 pp., £30, March,
“... of unguarded speech. ‘The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity,’ warned the Apostle James. ‘The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.’ Dabhoiwala points out that the saying ‘while sticks and stones may break my bones, words can never hurt me’ is first recorded only in 1862, but the contrary ... ”