Freedom of speech is something that represents the very dignity of what a Human being is. If you cannot speak … I mean, that’s what marks us off. That’s what marks us off from the stones and the stars. You can speak freely. It is almost impossible for me to describe. It is the thing that marks us as just below the angels. I don’t want to push this beyond where it should be pushed, but I feel it.

Freedom of speech – the right to express opinions without government restraint – is a democratic ideal that dates back to ancient Greece.

The ancient Greeks pioneered free speech as a democratic principle. The ancient Greek word ‘parrhesia’ means ‘free speech’ and appeared in Greek literature around the end of the fifth century B.C.

During the classical period, ‘parrhesia’ became a fundamental part of the democracy of Athens.

Leaders, philosophers, playwrights and everyday Athenians were free to openly discuss politics and religion and to criticize the government in some settings.

If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn’t he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received – from a well-meaning liberal – was the following: He said, ‘Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his Board of Directors?’ That’s the answer.

Well I ask you to consider – if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something – the faculty are a bunch of employees and we’re the raw material! But we’re a bunch of raw materials that don’t mean to be – have any process upon us. Don’t mean to be made into any product! Don’t mean – Don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We’re human beings!

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus – and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it – that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!

Mario Savio was an American activist and a key member in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.

He is most famous for his passionate speeches at the University of California, Berkeley on December 2nd, 1964.

Savio gave his most famous speech, on the ‘operation of the machine’, in front of 4,000 people. He and 800 others were arrested that day.