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In the First Amendment to the Constitution, the Founders made it clear that this was not to be a sky-god nation with a national religion like that of England, from whom we had just separated. It is curious how little understood this amendment is-yes, everyone has a right to worship any god he chooses but he does not have the right to impose his beliefs on others who do not happen to share in his superstitions and taboos.
Gore VidalI think the reality is that copyright law has for a very long time been a tiny little part of American jurisprudence, far removed from traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, and that made sense before the Internet. Now there is an unavoidable link between First Amendment interests and the scope of copyright law. The legal system is recognizing for the first time the extraordinary expanse of copyright regulation and its regulation of ordinary free-speech activities.
Lawrence LessigJefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted as suited any Supreme Court Justice or White House incumbent. That amendment had built a wall, with the ecclesiastical estate on one side and the civil estate on the other.
Edwin GaustadThe First Amendment is really at the very core of political speech, and political speech is at the core of the First Amendment. So, we want to be very careful to make sure that candidates for office are free to express their views so that people will make an informed choice. We don't want them holding back, and sort of concealing their views and then disclosing them afterwards.
Alex KozinskiThe time has come in our society when I see great wisdom and purpose in a United States Constitutional amendment declaring that marriage is between a man and a woman. There is nothing in that proposed amendment that requires a criminal prosecution or that directs the attorneys general to go out and round people up, but it declares a principle and it also creates a defensive barrier against those who would alter that traditional definition of marriage.
Dallin H. OaksNowhere else in the Constitution does a "right" attributed to "the people" refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention "the people," the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset... The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms... The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it "shall not be infringed."
Antonin ScaliaWe need a Supreme Court that in my opinion is going to uphold the Second Amendment, and all amendments, but the Second Amendment, which is under absolute siege.
Donald TrumpThe Original Sin which brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and dictatorship was the Federal Income Tax Amendment and its illegitimate child, Federal Aid.
Tom AndersonI do not believe that it can be too often repeated that the freedoms of speech, press, petition and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish. The first banning of an association because it advocates hated ideas - whether that association be called a political party or not - marks a fateful moment in the history of a free country.
Hugo BlackSlight sorrow for sin is sufficient, provided it at the same time produces amendment.
Charles Caleb ColtonAll human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
Benjamin FranklinI'm a constitutionalist. You know, does faith matter to me? Sure. But the beauty of the Constitution, the beauty of the First Amendment, it protects everyone's faith.
Ted CruzA funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, theyโre treated as public nuisances and evicted.
Robert ReichWe have a First Amendment for good reasons. We need a free press because without an educated electorate we cannot have a functioning democracy.
Jill SteinDo the people of this landโฆdesire to preserve those [liberties] protected by the First Amendmentโฆ If so, let them withstand all beginnings of encroachment. For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanquished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch for a saving hand while yet there was time.
George SutherlandI'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.
Sharron AngleSo 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 GaimanThe Google guys haven't even found a way to put abortion in the Constitution yet. Give 'em time. Give the Google guys time and abortion will show up in a keyword search of the Constitution. It's not there yet. Second Amendment is.
Rush LimbaughI simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom.
Charlton HestonI propose a Constitutional Amendment providing that, if any public official, elected or appointed, at any level of government, is caught lying to any member of the public for any reason, the punishment shall be death by public hanging.
L. Neil SmithAll children should be welcomed into the world and protected by the law. As President, I would immediately repeal President Clinton's five executive orders that promote abortion. I support a human life bill that defines unborn children as persons under the 14th Amendment. I will vigorously defend the pro-life plank in the Republican platform.
Gary BauerThe First Amendment gives all of us - it gives it to me, it gives it to you, it gives all Americans - the right to speak our minds freely. It gives you the right and me the right to criticize fake news, and criticize it strongly.
Donald TrumpJohn Marshall's warning that the power to tax is the power to destroy has taken on far greater meaning... more specifically, the power of the Internal Revenue Service is threatening to destroy the freedom of religion , guaranteed by the First Amendment. As part of that guarantee, Congress has granted tax exemptions for churches to avoid excessive interference in their religious activities.
Chuck GrassleyWhen a person is on a watch list or a no-fly list, and I have the endorsement of the NRA, which I'm very proud of. These are very, very good people, and they're protecting the Second Amendment.
Donald TrumpThere are more than 30 states, who either by statute or constitutional amendment, have defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.
John ThuneThe 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.
Potter StewartThere is nothing as dangerous as an unembodied principle: no matter what blood flows, the principle comes first. The First Amendment absolutists operate precisely on unembodied principle.
Andrea DworkinThe First Amendment serves not only the needs of the polity but also those of the human spirit - a spirit that demands self-expression .
Thurgood MarshallThe courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion, when they should be using it to protect religion.
Ernest IstookIf you want a candidate to defend life and marriage and religious liberty and the Second Amendment and to appoint strong constitutionalists to the court, I'm the only candidate with that record. That's why conservatives are uniting behind our campaign. And if they want to continue with the attacks, that's their prerogative.
Ted CruzIs any blogger out there saying anythingโdo they deserve First Amendment protection? These are the issues of our times.
Lindsey GrahamBy requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.
John Paul StevensWe are a people of faith. We have been so secure in that faith that we have enshrined in our Constitution protection for people who profess no faith. And good for us for doing so. That is what the First Amendment is all about.
William J. ClintonWhen did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?
Antonin ScaliaA sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervour of soul, rather than to cultivate those qualities that seem most popular.
Thomas a KempisAt the time, liberals didn't understand that they had First Amendment rights. So, I was doing cartoons in this narrative cartoon form about subject surrounding that and as I was turned down by editor after editor at each publishing house, I began to notice on their desks this new newspaper called The Village Voice, which I then went and picked up and thought, well my god, these editors that were turning me down all, whom tell me how much they like my stuff, but they don't know how to market it because nobody knows who I am. If I got into this paper, they would know who I am.
Jules FeifferIn 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 SandersOf the six men who have done most to make America the wonder and the joy she is to all of us, not one could be the citizen of a government so constituted; for Washington and Franklin and Jefferson, certainly the three mightiest leaders in our early history, were heretics in their day, Deists, as men called them; and Garrison and Lincoln and Sumner, certainly the three mightiest in these later times, would all be disfranchised by the proposed amendment. Lincoln could not have taken the oath of office had such a clause been in the Constitution.
John ChadwickAny unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.
Huey NewtonI think in a society where you can't even pass the Equal Rights Amendment, it's very difficult to women make a progress. Incidentally, we are exactly 160 years after the very first women's public rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, when a handful of women started it all and began the movement to make women equal.
Carolyn MaloneyWhen you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment, taking the Fifth so they're not prosecuted, when you have the man that set up the illegal server taking the Fifth, I think it's disgraceful. And believe me, this country thinks it's - really thinks it's disgraceful, also.
Donald Trump