Quotes About First Amendment

The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the people of this country free to think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.

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

The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.

I am for the First Amendment from the first word to the last. I believe it means what it says.

The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.

The basis of the First Amendment is the hypothesis that speech can rebut speech, propaganda will answer propaganda, free debate of ideas will result in the wisest governmental policies.

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

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

No one respects the First Amendment more than I do. People have a right to express their concerns and their hopes and dreams to their government.

One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment.

I would say that the Pentagon Papers case of 1971 - in which the government tried to block the The New York Times and The Washington Post that they obtained from a secret study of how we got involved in the war in Vietnam - that is probably the most important case.

In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

In hindsight, Watergate was a curse as well as a blessing for American journalism. The courageous reporting of the 'Post' and the 'New York Times' - coupled with the favourable Supreme Court rulings on publication of the Pentagon Papers - were landmarks for the interpretation of First Amendment rights and the freedom of the press.

When you have mass surveillance, it's impossible to meet the intent of the First Amendment because reporters can't talk to sources because sources are afraid to talk.

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.

I think the I.R.S. is a Sword of Damocles over the First Amendment, and I think it is a menace.

CNN is an American symbol of independent journalism and First Amendment free speech. My board and I are clear: CNN will remain completely independent from an editorial perspective.

We have a First Amendment right to burn the flag as symbolic speech. The Constitution protects that right. To spend time and effort on this is ridiculous.

A school prayer amendment would confer upon public school boards a power the First Amendment now denies to Congress and the states, that is, the power to establish religion.

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.

I just think political correctness is a limitation on our First Amendment freedoms.

In the case of the Obama poster, I was just exercising my First Amendment rights - and my free speech is exercised visually. People who want to talk or write in order to share an opinion about Obama can do that, but when I want to say what I think about him, I need to make a portrait.

There's nothing in the First Amendment that even remotely talks about spending money for political contests, and to say that an individual can spend as much of his or her own money as he or she wants constitutionally without any limitation, I think is just absurd.

Today, the religion clauses of the First Amendment do not need to be fixed; they need to be followed.