Quotes About Amendment

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.

There is this fashionable progressive notion that everything is so completely political that the idea we could have some sort of neutral legal process is practically utopian - because we all know that the more money you have, the more rights you can exercise in this society. But I don't think that you deal with income inequality by limiting the First Amendment rights of affluent people. I'd rather see people screw around with the tax code to redistribute wealth a little bit than screw around with the First Amendment.

The First Amendment is not an altar on which we must sacrifice our children, families, and community standards. Obscene material that is not protected by the First Amendment can and must be prohibited.

I 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.

Every public elementary school ought to welcome Good News Clubs. Parents appreciate them; children love them; and the First Amendment protects them. The First Amendment requires that similar groups be provided with equal treatment. Religious speech is not a disability. It is our preeminent freedom.

Then President [Barack] Obama went on to argue that a citizen`s Second Amendment rights can be restricted without being infringed, just like any other rights. There are limits on your free speech and on your right to privacy. But he also made another nuanced Constitutional argument, that the rights enshrined in the Second Amendment must be balanced alongside the others rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

The 14th Amendment, 2nd Amendment, there's nothing in the Constitution that says that if you are born to an illegal immigrant in America, that you are an American citizen. It's not there. People think it is. They confuse it with being born to an American citizen in America or overseas. But there's nothing in the law, nothing in the Constitution.

We 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.

The word Amendment itself is an encouraging thing, isn't it? Because an amendment, it tells of a system of government that allows for the improvement of itself. Just move forward a little bit, one day at a time.

If you're not going to offend somebody you don't need the First Amendment.

I must acknowledge God. It says so in the Constitution of Alabama. It says so in the First Amendment of the Constitution.

We have a First Amendment for good reasons. We need a free press because without an educated electorate we cannot have a functioning democracy.

The National Guard fulfills the militia mentioned in the Second amendment. Citizens no longer need to protect the states or themselves.

Do the people of this land…desire to preserve those [liberties] protected by the First Amendment… 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.

Commanding goodness and forbiding to do evil (are) for the amendment and correction of society and the common folks.

[Liberals] are always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them. ... Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment.

The first phrase of the First Amendment spoke to the freedom uppermost in Jefferson's mind when it provided that, 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' Here a double guarantee could be found: first, that government would do nothing to give official endorsement to a religion or to set one faith above another; second, that government would do nothing to inhibit the freedom of religion.

Perhaps the deterioration of American education is illustrated by the high correlation between the number of years a person has attended school and his inability to understand the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is more likely, though, that those who interpret the Second Amendment to preclude an individual right to own guns are driven by their political agenda. Whichever the case, they do themselves no credit when they tell us that a simple, elegant sentence means the opposite of what it clearly says.

The fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that no private property shall be taken for a public use without the payment of just compensation.

Congress decides who becomes a citizen and how. To automatically say the 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship, no, we can't change that. Amending the Constitution, not possible, takes too long. We gotta find another way of dealing with this. No, we don't, because it's not there. You don't have to amend the Constitution.

There's as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.

And, finally, as a Republican, I believe it is important to keep our word and keep our covenant, and that is exactly what we should do with the Wright amendment today.

The Second Amendment is a constitutional right. I didn't make it up, the Republican Party didn't make it up. It's in the Constitution. I think it's just as important as any of the other rights in our constitution.

I am opposed to special rights for gays just as I am opposed to special rights for heterosexuals or smokers. I can attest to the fact that sexual orientation is not immutable and I urge the city council to vote no on this amendment.

The 16th Amendment corroded the American concept of natural rights; ultimately reduced the American citizen to a status of subject, so much so that he is not aware of it; enhanced Executive power to the point of reducing Congress to innocuity; and enabled the central government to bribe the states, once independent units, into subservience. No kingship in the history of the world ever exercised more power than our Presidency, or had more of the people's wealth at its disposal.

There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.

When I think of civil liberties I think of the founding principles of the country. The freedoms that are in the First Amendment. But also the fundamental right to privacy.

The English Language Amendment says above all, 'Let's see to it that our children, our young people, learn English. Let us not deny them the opportunity to participate in American life, so that they can go as far as their dreams and talents can take them.

If we set the precedent of limiting the First Amendment, in order to protect the sensibilities of those who are offended by flag burning, what will we say the next time someone is offended by some other minority view, or by some other person's exercise of the freedom the Constitution is supposed to protect?

People don't realize that almost two-thirds of the population in the United States lives in a state where either medical or recreational marijuana are now legal. Two-thirds of the country. I am looking at it as kind of a 10th Amendment, states'-rights issue.

Under the First Amendment's prohibition of the establishment of religion, the Court has steadily made religion a matter for the private individual by driving it out of the public arena.

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

Tolerance is a one-way street in the Age of Obama. 'Choice' is in the eye (and iron fist) of the First Amendment usurper.

It is a very odd sort of Patriot that would destroy the First Amendment to protect the Second.

The 21st Amendment gives the states the right to decide what the drinking ages should be and other aspects relative to alcoholic beverages, and I support that. As a United States senator, I want to weigh in - this is not my agenda.

There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision. By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It's been a great run.

If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.

This provision (the 4th Amendment) speaks for itself. Its plain object is to secure the perfect enjoyment of that great right of the common law, that a man's house shall be his own castle, privileged against all civil and military intrusion.

Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be redefined by activist judges. For the good of families, children and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage.

What I put forward was an amendment that would have temporarily halted immigration from high-risk terrorist countries, but would have started it up, but I wanted them to go through Global Entry, which is a program where we do background checks.

Our Founding Fathers were the first to articulate the reasons for their First Amendment, the same reasons given by Learned Hand, and by Justice Brennan in New York Times v. Sullivan . It is a lesson we keep forgetting and must relearn in each succeeding generation.

If the Government is going to intrude upon the sacred ground of the First Amendment and tell its citizens that their exercise of protected speech could land them in jail, the law imposing such a penalty must clearly define the prohibited speech not only for the potential offender but also for the potential enforcer.

The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. Rathe, it studiously defines the manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no concert or union or dependency one on the other. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other.

So far, 44 States, or 88 percent of the States, have enacted laws providing that marriage shall consist of a union between a man and a woman. Only 75 percent of the States are required to approve a constitutional amendment.

He [Louis Brandeis] would have not had any patience with that great debate which you're right to kind of signal between Justice Scalia and Justice Alito about do you need a physical trespass into the home or onto the carriage in order to trigger the values of the Fourth Amendment.

The Second Amendment was designed explicitly to protect weapons that would be useful in a military context.

Defending birthright citizenship is about being on the right side of liberty. The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican Party.