In his Agreopagitica, John Milton wrote, "Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?"

Often thought of as the an argument against censorship through prior restraint, two doctrines came out of this; the second being the concept of the Free Market Place of Ideas. John Stuart Mill developed this concept further and is given much credit for its development. It is he who is cited by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes when he wrote in US v. Abrams,

"To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care whole-heartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises. But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."

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