First Amendment Quotes - Page 10

• When they took the Fourth Amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs. When they took the Sixth Amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent. When they took the Second Amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun. Now they've come for the First Amendment, and I can't say anything at all.

  Tim Freeman

  Gun, Collecting Things, Drug

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• The First Amendment says keep government out of religion. It doesn't say keep religion out of government.

  Rand Paul

  Government, Firsts, Amendments

  "Rand Paul’s Presidential Campaign: Five Facts About His Faith" by Kimberly Winston, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 8, 2015.

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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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• Banning guns because of their misuse is like banning the First Amendment because one might libel or slander.

  Ron Paul

  Gun, Might, Firsts

  Twitter post from Jan 25, 2013

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• 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.

  Neil Gaiman

  Country, Freedom Of Speech, World

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• [I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

  Judy Blume

  Real, Book, Fire

  FaceBook post by Judy Blume from Oct 18, 2013

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• All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!

  Kurt Vonnegut

  People, Giving, Atheism

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• When our Founding Fathers passed the First Amendment, they sought to protect churches from government interference. They never intended to construct a wall of hostility between government and the concept of religious belief itself.

  Ronald Reagan

  Religious, Wall, Father

  Remarks at the Annual Convention of the the National Association of Evangelicals, delivered 8 March 1983, Orlando, Florida

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• If you don't uphold your legal responsibility to enforce the First Amendment, to provide speakers with platforms and audiences with safe, the ability to listen to speakers of all different kinds, agnostic ideology, if you don't do that as a university, you are not performing your essential function.

  Milo Yiannopoulos

  Responsibility, Essentials, Different

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

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• Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

  Salman Rushdie

  Freedom, Games, Speech

  Excerpts From Rushdie's Address: 1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Metaphor', archive.nytimes.com. December 12, 1991.

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• Privacy is not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution as freedom of speech is in the First Amendment.

  Larry Flynt

  Freedom Of Speech, Firsts, Privacy

  "Life, Liberty And Pursuit Of Porn". Wired Interview, www.wired.com. February 19, 2004.

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• 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.

  Roger Ebert

  Responsibility, Speaks Out, Ideas

  Interview With Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

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• In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of "overpermiticisation" - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment.

  Naomi Wolf

  Government, America, Requirements

  "Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street" by Naomi Wolf, www.theguardian.com. October 19, 2011.

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

  Keith Ellison

  Government, Addresses, Firsts

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• Republican Michigan Congressman Justin Amash said, no president is allowed to burn the first amendment.

  Chuck Todd

  President, Michigan, Firsts

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• The First Amendment means everything to me.

  Julian Bond

  Mean, Firsts, Amendments

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• The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, and software has been treated as a form of speech ever since. So if software code is speech, Apple says the First Amendment also means the government can't tell Apple what to say.

  Laura Sydell

  Mean, Government, Apples

  "Apple's First Amendment Argument". "All Things Considered" with Laura Sydell, www.npr.org. February 26, 2016.

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• Senator majority leader, Mitch McConnell, slammed [Donald] Trump`s comments about burning the American flag which is protected under the first amendment should lead to jail time.

  Chuck Todd

  Majority Leader, Jail Time, Flags

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• Reading their letters and the First Amendment of the US Constitution, I infer that this nation's founders noted that religions have been at the center of great deal of trouble, so they precluded the US government from getting involved in religion, i.e. "... shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Over the centuries, various religions have laid claim to various morals; consider the difficulties outsiders are having today in the Middle East, for example.

  Bill Nye

  Reading, Exercise, Law

  "BioLogos Interviews Bill Nye". Interview with Brad Kramer, biologos.org. February 4, 2015.

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• I love the protest signs protected by the First Amendment - some of them humorous, some of them passionate, some factual, some entirely incorrect - all of them free ideas.

  Jennifer Granholm

  Humorous, Ideas, Passionate

  "Occupy a Wing of the Democratic Party" by Jennifer M. Granholm, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 3, 2012.

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• 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.

  Penn Jillette

  Believe, Corporations, Firsts

  "Voodoo and Violence". Interview with Steve Kurtz, reason.com. April 1994.

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• The way liberals are interpreting the First Amendment today is that it prevents anyone who is religious from being in government.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Religious, Government, Today

  "The Way Things Ought to Be". Book by Rush Limbaugh, 1992.

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• People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Teacher, Bad Ass, People

  "A Teacher, a Student and a Church-State Dispute". Letter to the New York Times, query.nytimes.com. December 21, 2006.

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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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• God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

  Rebecca West

  Funny, Sarcastic, Women

  The Strange Necessity (1928) "The Tosh Horse"

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