Quotes About Amendment

The men who wrote the First Amendment religion clause did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that amendment... the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. It can hardly be thought that in the same week the members of the first Congress voted to appoint and pay a chaplain for each House and also voted to approve the draft of the First Amendment... (that) they intended to forbid what they had just declared acceptable.

In my view, if the Court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that Amendment was very important when the nation was new, it gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms but it was for one purpose only, and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation.

Whatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it was 200 years ago... The government should deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the embarrasing Amendment.

Desperate times require desperate measures. What Lincoln and the Lobbyist for the Amendment and the Manager of the Amendment and himself, what they did to get this passed was not illegal. It was murky, but what they did was noble and grand. How they went about it was somewhat murky. Nothing they did was really illegal.

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

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.

Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of the freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence.

It could be clearly proved that by a practical nullification [by the South] of the Fifteenth Amendment the Republicans have for several years been deprived of a majority in both the House and Senate. The failure of the South to faithfully observe the Fifteenth Amendment is the cause of the failure of all efforts towards complete pacification. It is on this hook that the bloody shirt now hangs.

In other words, you're taking away your freedom of speech. And they [ministers and priests] started telling me about the Johnson Amendment which really was the first time - and I started studying .And we had a meeting a month later and I said, "We're gonna get rid of the Johnson Amendment because they're stopping you and our great people from talking."

No one understands that the First Amendment is only important if you are going to offend somebody. If you're not going to offend somebody, you don't need protection of the First Amendment.

The Original Sin which brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and dictatorship was the Federal Income Tax Amendment and its illegitimate child, Federal Aid.

In my political career, I'd like to see a constitutional balanced budget amendment.

What I would like to see is for people to come together and say: Of course we're going to protect and defend the Second Amendment. But we're going to do it in a way that tries to save some of these 33,000 lives that we lose every year.

We don't need a constitutional amendment for kids to pray.

We are going to have a long period where people are accustomed or conditioned to what's going on now with the raping of the Fourth Amendment.

I have a lot of guns on my ranch. I don't use them for hunting. I'm not a hunter. It's for protection. The Second Amendment was designed for tyranny.

The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.

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.

Three conditions are necessary for Penance: contrition, which is sorrow for sin, together with a purpose of amendment; confession of sins without any omission; and satisfaction by means of good works.

The prohibition amendment to the Constitution requires the Congress. and the President to provide adequate laws to prevent its violation. It is my duty to enforce such laws.To prevent smuggling, the Coast Card should be greatly strengthened, and a supply of swift power boats should be provided. The major sources of production should be rigidly regulated, and every effort should be made to suppress interstate traffic... It is the duty of a citizen not only to observe the law but to let it be known that he is opposed to its violation.

To the ACLU, the First Amendment speaks more directly to freedom from religion than it does to freedom of religion.

There's, under Obama, an epidemic has developed of abusing national security laws to crack down on legitimate use of the First Amendment.

Because I support the Second Amendment doesn't mean that I want people who shouldn't have guns to be able to threaten you, kill you or members of your family.

When 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.

When I started law school I was shocked to learn that our legal system traditionally had the man as the head and master of the family. As late as the '70s and '80s when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, states like Louisiana still had a head and master law.

Hillary Clinton is apparently very happy about [Barack] Obama clamping down on your 2nd Amendment rights.

I'll do anything to pass the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], even if it means wearing babydoll nightgowns and padded bras, if that will make people less afraid.

Americans who believe their government should not be a giant ATM, dispensing money and benefits to people who have not earned them, and who want their country returned to its founding principles, must now exercise that power before it is taken from them. The Tenth Amendment is one place to begin. The streets are another. It worked for the Left.

I support local solutions to illegal immigration as protected by the 10th amendment. I support making English the official language of all documents and contracts.

Whatever one's religion in his private life may be, for the officeholder, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts - including the First Amendment and the strict separation of church and state.

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 Constitution says nothing about anchor babies. The 14th Amendment says nothing about birthright citizenship.

1913 wasn't a very good year. 1913 gave us the income tax, the 16th amendment and the IRS.

To hold that Congress has general police power would be to hold that it may accomplish objects not intrusted to the general government, and to defeat the operation of the 10th Amendment, declaring that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

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.

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.

First off, I never favored a constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion or to overturn Roe v. Wade.

In the national debate about a serious issue, it is the expression of the minority's viewpoint that most demands the protection of the First Amendment. Whatever the better policy may be, a full and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana is far wiser than suppression of speech because it is unpopular.

All that first term, lip service to gun owners is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term.

Asked random questions about the First Amendment and how they would like to have it applied, if you believe in polls at all, the average American wants no part of it. But if you ask, 'What if we threw the Constitution away tomorrow?' the answer is 'No, that would be bad!' But living under the Constitution is another story altogether.

Bush proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Some saw the move as an attempt to preserve traditional values, while others saw it as a cynical ploy to ensure that Vice President... Cheney will never have to pay for his gay daughter's wedding.

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

As a strong supporter of our 2nd Amendment rights, I believe tougher enforcement of our nation's existing gun laws must be done before any more laws are enacted and put on the books.

My view is that we have the Second Amendment rights to bear arms, and in this country my view is that we should not add new legistlation. I do not believe in new laws restricting gun ownership and gun use.

It has been pretty much downhill ever since the 13th amendment

The14th Amendment does not require birthright citizenship. It doesn't mention it.

[Asserting] important First Amendment rights ... why should [executions] be the one area that is conducted behind closed doors?... Why shouldn't executions be public?

Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in Government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.