#amendment

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. ↗

— James E. Rogers

#aware #fail #first #first amendment #may

I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head... The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#authoritarianism #bill-of-rights #constitution #democracy #egalitarianism

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." [The One Un-American Act, Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)] ↗

— William O. Douglas

#first-amendment #freedom #freedom-of-speech #freedom-of-thought #liberty

Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#evil #first-amendment #freedom #freedom-of-speech #hubris

I try to do that in this book without preaching - to try to do as you just said that you really have to defend the First Amendment rights of everybody. ↗

— Floyd Abrams

#amendment rights #book #defend #everybody #first

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. ↗

— Floyd Abrams

#amendment #another #case #circumstances #comes

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. ↗

— Floyd Abrams

#america #began #did #first #first amendment

Any time someone carries a picket sign in front of the White House, that is the First Amendment in action. ↗

— Julian Bond

#amendment #any #carries #first #first amendment

If we can't have the courage to tell our constituents, hey, we've got to cut back, then if we can point to something and say, I would like to vote for more benefits for you, but this balanced budget amendment or statutory spending cap or whatever the device is, is preventing me from doing it. ↗

— Jeff Flake

#back #balanced #balanced budget #balanced budget amendment #benefits

I'm a crusader. I really believe in the First Amendment, and I use it fully, and I pay a price for that. ↗

— Al Goldstein

#believe #first #first amendment #fully #i