First Amendment Quotes

Trump was so different - in a bad way - that I thought the best thing I could do was to resist him. And that's because he was attacking the institutions of our democracy, from the First Amendment and the free press to the judiciary. He was stifling internal dissent, and then he was making false and misleading statements routinely. And to me, that's what takes us down the road to authoritarianism and that's why I decided to start resisting him.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

Every legislative limitation upon utterance, however valid, may in a particular case serve as an inroad upon the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects.

I think the president, very simply, has never read a copy of the Constitution. I think that that's true. He's just never bothered to read the Constitution, and he just has no understanding and appreciation of the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech.

[Confiscating a book and punishing its author] is a sign that one does not have a good case, or at least doesn't trust it enough to defend it with reasons and refute the objections. Some people even go so far as to consider prohibited or confiscated books to be the best ones of all, for the prohibition indicates that their authors wrote what they really thought rather than what they were supposed to think . . .

It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.

The First Amendment says nothing about your getting paid for saying anything. It just says you can say it. I don't believe that if a corporation pulls all the money out of you or a network pulls their money away or you get fired, you're being censored.

As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be.

Any time someone carries a picket sign in front of the White House, that is the First Amendment in action

In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

It just seems to be a human trait to want to protect the speech of people with whom we agree. For the First Amendment, that is not good enough. So it is really important that we protect First Amendment rights of people no matter what side of the line they are on.

In the national debate about a serious issue, it is the expression of the minority's viewpoint that most demands the protection of the First Amendment. Whatever the better policy may be, a full and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana is far wiser than suppression of speech because it is unpopular.

I begin to feel like most Americans don't understand the First Amendment, don't understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don't understand that it's the responsibility of the citizen to speak out.

The right really dominates radio, and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn't. They want to shut other people up. They really don't understand the First Amendment.

So the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for, and sometimes winning and sometimes losing, the fight for First Amendment rights in comics and, more generally, for freedom of speech.

The First Amendment's language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.

Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts." This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where, in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win.

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.

We don't have the freedom of speech to talk about the weather. We have the first amendment so we can say some very controversial things.

The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don't have that.

The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.

The courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion, when they should be using it to protect religion.

The First Amendment means everything to me.

The First Amendment rejects red tape, cover-up and double-speak.

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

I'm a crusader. I really believe in the First Amendment, and I use it fully, and I pay a price for that.

But I know newspapers. They have the first amendment and they can tell any lie knowing it's a lie and they're protected if the person's famous or it's a company.

Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.

The First Amendment is not without limits.

Asked random questions about the First Amendment and how they would like to have it applied, if you believe in polls at all, the average American wants no part of it. But if you ask, 'What if we threw the Constitution away tomorrow?' the answer is 'No, that would be bad!' But living under the Constitution is another story altogether.

The Framers of the First Amendment were not concerned with preventing government from abridging their freedom to speak about crops and cockfighting, or with protecting the expressive activity of topless dancers, which of late has found some shelter under the First Amendment. Rather, the Framers cherished unabridged freedom of political communication.

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

My heart trembles when I reflect that God is just

And so popular culture raises issues that are very important, actually, in the country I think. You get issues of the First Amendment rights and issues of drug use, issues of AIDS, and things like that all arise naturally out of pop culture.

When I speak to students, I tell them why we have a First Amendment. I tell them about the Committees of Correspondence. I tell them how in a secret meeting of the Raleigh Tavern in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who did not agree with each other, started a Committee of Correspondence.

The First Amendment says that we can protest and call to - on our government to address grievances.

It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God.

Phil Robertson and his family are great citizens of the State of Louisiana. The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with. I don’t agree with quite a bit of stuff I read in magazine interviews or see on TV. In fact, come to think of it, I find a good bit of it offensive. But I also acknowledge that this is a free country and everyone is entitled to express their views. In fact, I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment. It is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended.

It is true that many Americans find the Commandments in accord with their personal beliefs. But we do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.

Leftists would like to pretend that any criticism of their views raises the specter of domestic repression. But in a country with a First Amendment, no suppression from government is likely, and in the citadels of the media and the academy, the far left is actually vastly overrepresented.

I believe America went wrong in terms of respecting the First Amendment, the state of free speech on American college campuses and on the media and in academia.

A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite.

I'm not up for changing the 10th amendment or the 14th amendment, the first amendment or the second amendment.