These first amendment quotes will inspire you. The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging first amendment quotes, first amendment sayings, and first amendment proverbs.
Famous First Amendment Quotes
- “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” ~ Harry S. Truman
- “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” ~ John Milton
- “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.” ~ William O. Douglas
- “An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.” ~ Hugo Black
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“As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be.” ~ L. Neil Smith
- “The first amendment protects free speech, but if you don’t have freedom of thought, do you really have freedom of speech?” ~ Rob Kampia
- “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” ~ William J. Brennan
- “If we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” ~ Noam Chomsky
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“In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.” ~ John Perry Barlow
- “The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.” ~ Anthony Kennedy
- “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.” ~ Anthony Kennedy
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“The First Amendment is not without limits.” ~ Jerry Falwell
- “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.” ~ Hugo Black
- “Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.” ~ Stewart Dalzell
- “The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.” ~ Michael Chabon
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“The First Amendment rejects red tape, cover-up and double-speak.” ~ Roy Barnes
- “If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.” ~ Thurgood Marshall
- “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” ~ John Adams
- “I think it is appropriate that we pay tribute to this great constitutional principle which is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution: the principle of religious independence, of religious liberty, of religious freedom.” ~ John F. Kennedy
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“The First Amendment, I think, is the jewel of our Constitution.” ~ Samuel Alito
- “The right really dominates radio, and it’s amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn’t. They want to shut other people up. They really don’t understand the First Amendment.” ~ Roger Ebert
- “Without either the first or second amendment, we would have no liberty; the first allows us to find out what’s happening, the second allows us to do something about it! The second will be taken away first, followed by the first and then the rest of our freedoms.” ~ Unknown
- “The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.” ~ William O. Douglas
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“(W)e do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.” ~ Sandra Day O’Connor
- “The First Amendment doesn’t give anybody the right to be heard. People don’t have to listen to you.” ~ Rush Limbaugh
- “But I know newspapers. They have the first amendment and they can tell any lie knowing it’s a lie and they’re protected if the person’s famous or it’s a company.” ~ Steve Wozniak
- “Laws protecting the United States flag do not cut away at the freedom of speech guaranteed in the First Amendment… Congress made this position clear upon passage of the Flag Protection Act of 1989, which prohibited desecration of the flag.” ~ Larry Craig
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“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
- “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.” ~ Arlen Specter
- “We all have the right of freedom of speech under the First Amendment. We all don’t have to agree with one another on our opinions. Everyone in my circle, that I run around with, we all feel the same about God, country, integrity and character.” ~ Luke Scott
- “The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.” ~ Hugo Black
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“I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.” ~ E. B. White
- “It just seems to be a human trait to want to protect the speech of people with whom we agree. For the First Amendment, that is not good enough. So it is really important that we protect First Amendment rights of people no matter what side of the line they are on.” ~ Floyd Abrams , First Amendment quotes rights
- “The Defense Department’s plan to ban newspaper reporters from pool coverage of military operations is incredible. It reveals the administration to be out of touch with journalism, reality and the First Amendment.” ~ Arthur Ochs Sulzberger
- “The question about those aromatic advertisements that perfume companies are having stitched into magazines these days is this: under the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, is smelling up the place a constitutionally protected form of expression?” ~ Calvin Trillin
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“The courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion when they should be using it to protect religion.” ~ Ernest Istook
- “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.” ~ Hugo Black
- “The Washington Times wrote a story questioning the authenticity of some of the suggestions made about me in Silent Coup. But as a believer in the First Amendment, I believe they have more than a right to air their views.” ~ Bob Woodward
- “Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community’s standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don’t like, provided the matter relates to “sexual impurity” or has a tendency “to excite lustful thoughts.” This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where, in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win.” ~ William O. Douglas , First Amendment quotes freedom
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“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
- “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
- “I 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 Black
- “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” ~ James Madison
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“The First Amendment…begins with the five loveliest words in the English language: ‘Congress shall make no law’.” ~ George Will
- “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” ~ John Stuart Mill
- “The First Amendment reads more like a dream than a law, and no other nation, so far as I know, has been crazy enough to include such a dream among its fundamental legal documents. I defend it because it has been so successful for two centuries in preserving our freedom and increasing our vitality, knowing that all arguments in support of it are certain to sound absurd.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut
- “Donald Trump creates scapegoats in Muslims and Mexican immigrants. He calls for the use of torture. He calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press. This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.” ~ Mitt Romney
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“The First Amendment serves not only the needs of the polity but also those of the human spirit – a spirit that demands self-expression .” ~ Thurgood Marshall
- “The First Amendment was specifically designed for citizens to insult politicians. Libel laws were written to protect law students speaking out on political issues from getting called whores by Oxycontin addicts.” ~ Bill Maher
- “We have a First Amendment for good reasons. We need a free press because without an educated electorate we cannot have a functioning democracy.” ~ Jill Stein
- “Nothing’s riding on this, except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys f-k up again, I’m gonna get mad.” ~ Ben Bradlee
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“It is called the First Amendment. …Simple words marching in serried ranks. Compact, concise. To the point. Clear and pure. It’s freedom’s music.” ~ Jack Valenti
- “At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one’s mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty – and thus a good unto itself – but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions.” ~ William Rehnquist
- “It is the fundamental right of every American, as guaranteed by the first amendment of the Constitution, to worship as he or she pleases… This legislation sets forth the policy of the United States to protect and preserve the inherent right of American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiian people to believe, express, and exercise their traditional religions” ~ Jimmy Carter
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“Those who won our independence… valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
- “The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right.” ~ Naomi Wolf
- “Wikileaks has – we specialize in bringing the First Amendment to the world, and we were always very surprised one of our biggest battles would be trying to bring it to the United States under an Obama administration.” ~ Julian Assange
- “Thus if the First Amendment means anything in this field, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community. In other words, literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.” ~ William O. Douglas
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“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” ~ Potter Stewart
- “I am committed to the First Amendment principles of religious freedom, tolerance, and diversity. Whether Mormon, Methodist, Jewish, or Muslim, Americans should be able to participate in their constitutional free exercise of religion. I do not think witchcraft is a religion, and I do not think it is in any way appropriate for the U.S. military to promote it.” ~ George W. Bush
- “Motion pictures are of course a different medium of expression than the public speech, the radio, the stage, the novel, or the magazine. But the First Amendment draws no distinction between the various methods of communicating ideas.” ~ William O. Douglas
First Amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
