First Amendment Rights Quotes

• The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.

  James Madison

  Religious, Rights, Liberty

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• 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.

  Thurgood Marshall

  Business, Book, Mean

  Stanley v. Georgia (1969)

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• They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Inspirational, Happiness, Peace

  Benjamin Franklin, William-Temple Franklin (1818). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of (the Same), Continued to the Time of His Death by William Temple Franklin. - London, H. Colburn 1818”, p.270

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• If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

  Noam Chomsky

  Inspirational, Relationship, Freedom

  Interview with John Pilger on BBC's "The Late Show", November 25, 1992.

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• Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

  William O. Douglas

  Teaching, Rights In America, Political Revolution

  "The One Un-American Act". William O. Douglas' speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award, December 3, 1952.

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• An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.

  Hugo Black

  Religious, Political, Firsts

  NewYork Times Co. v. Sullivan (concurring opinion) (1964)

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• 

  If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

  John Stuart Mill

  Freedom, Philosophy, Differences

  On Liberty ch. 2 (1859)

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• ...The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.

  Harry Browne

  Thinking, Fbi Agents, Rights

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• The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship.

  Joichi Ito

  Believe, Ideas, Rights

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• I do believe that supporting our First Amendment rights and supporting local law enforcement are not mutually exclusive.

  Steve Clevenger

  Believe, Rights, Law

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• Breaking the United States up into a number of pieces could be very good for the integration of those new nations with the rest of the world and the international law whose primary enemy is now the United States government. I think that it would be very good for democracy, for people to be within some hundreds of miles of their nation's capital, as they are in many other countries, so that they didn't have to travel thousands of miles to protest, to exercise their First Amendment rights, but that is the current state of affairs in this overly large, imperial nation.

  David Swanson

  Country, Exercise, Thinking

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• 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.

  Kurt Loder

  Country, Thinking, Drug Use

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• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Rights, People, Not Good Enough

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". "Your Turn - Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense" with Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. une 15, 2005.

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• In my view, a corporation is not a person. A corporation does not have First Amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign.

  Bernie Sanders

  Rights, Views, Political

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I want to regain my First Amendment rights.

  Laura Schlessinger

  Rights, Want, Firsts

  Larry King Live, transcripts.cnn.com. August 17, 2010.

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• Our country as a whole, no less than the Hastings College of Law, values tolerance, cooperation, learning, and the amicable resolution of conflicts. But we seek to achieve those goals through "[a] confident pluralism that conduces to civil peace and advances democratic consensus-building," not by abridging First Amendment rights.

  Samuel Alito

  Country, College, Rights

  Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, 130 S. Ct. 2971, 3015-16, 2010.

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• [Asserting] important First Amendment rights ... why should [executions] be the one area that is conducted behind closed doors?... Why shouldn't executions be public?

  Phil Donahue

  Doors, Rights, Important

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• 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.

  Neil Gaiman

  Book, Fighting, Winning

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• Whether children have first amendment rights is a vexed legal question, but what is not in question is that they someday will. Constraining them from expressing their views is no preparation for exercising those rights.

  Crispin Sartwell

  Children, Exercise, Rights

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