Quotes About First Amendment

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.

There are some circumstances in which the First Amendment interest comes up against another interest that is really important and in which we have to make a decision in a particular case as to which is more important.

Remember: the ratings system is a voluntary infringement of First Amendment rights, an uneasy bargain between the needs of parents, the needs of artists, and the needs of large media corporations to make profits. Any time we chip away at the First Amendment, we should at least do it with some reverence.

You may not be aware of a recent survey that showed that if the First Amendment were put to a popular vote today, it would fail by a 60% to 40% vote.

The idea that corporations have the same First Amendment protections of free speech as people is troubling. Corporations are not people. They don't attend our schools, get married and have children. They don't vote in our elections.

The FBI holds sacred the rights of individuals to peacefully exercise their First Amendment freedoms.

Americans may not always live up to the Bill of Rights, but Americans do not ban books.

I would never jeopardize classified information. I served my country well and loyally, and I had to sue the C.I.A. on First Amendment grounds.

We don't have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets.

When you pick up a guitar, you don't put down your First Amendment rights.

The government would be able to go to court with respect to newspaper articles, broadcast pieces and the like that they thought were bad or harmful or even against the government and try to block them.

I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment. But I think I have a First Amendment right not to be shot.

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

Once you step foot on the Supreme Court steps, you lose your first-amendment rights. I don't see how, as an American citizen, you can't go to the Supreme Court steps and speak your mind or speak your piece peacefully.

When I began we did not really have a lot of First Amendment law. It is really surprising to think of it this way, but a lot of the law - most of the law that relates to the First Amendment freedom of the press in America - is really within living memory.

It is called the First Amendment. ...Simple words marching in seried ranks. Compact, concise. To the point. Clear and pure. It's freedom's music.

It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.

The spirit of the First Amendment has been effectively repealed for conservative speech by a censorious, accusatory mob.

The right to be a journalist is part of the Bill of Rights.

If there is a bedrock principle of 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.

The Constitution does not speak of freedom for those who wish to say only what society approves. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression without qualification.

All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance—unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion—have the full protection of the guaranties…. But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.

The chilling effect upon the exercise of First Amendment rights may derive from the fact of the prosecution, unaffected by prospects of its success or failure.

P]olitical speech does not lose First Amendment protection "simply because its source is a corporation". Otherwise, there would be nothing in the Constitution stopping the government from shutting down any newspaper, movie company, television station, or website that organized itself as a corporation.