amendment QUOTES

1 " People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers. "

― Neil deGrasse Tyson

2 " All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death! "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

3 " Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. . . . Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. "

― Robert H. Jackson

4 " Because this law could mean so much or so little, it held potential for causing great mischief in the world of art and politics. We needed to reduce its uncertainty, and the best way to do that, I believed, was to force a court to interpret it, which would either void or narrow the law. To make it as broad a target as possible and to assure that someone would sue us, I reproduced the Helms amendment verbatim in the terms and conditions for grant recipients. It could not be ignored there, and if it was to be declared unconstitutional, it had to appear where the courts could not ignore it either. "

5 " A 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, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted. "

― Robert B. Reich

6 " ...Subordination of the state to Christian values is precisely what the early Puritans, even those in the tradition of the Mayflower Pilgrims, aimed to do. The First Amendment notwithstanding, large numbers of the American public (especially churchgoing Protestant Christians) have embodied this Puritan way of thinking, viewing America as a " Christan nation." Relatively recent poll data bear out the enduring character of these Puritan convictions. According to a Pew Forum poll held just prior to the 2004 election, over one-half of the public would have reservations voting for a candidate with no religious affiliation (31 percent refusing to vote for a Muslim and 15 percent for a Catholic). "

7 " The real Machiavellian genius of the First Amendment is that free speech turns out to be mostly harmless — a lot of P.C. nit-picking, dingbat conspiracy theories, tedious libertarian screeds and name calling. The only “free speech” that has any effect in a stable, well-run plutocracy is the kind protected by Buckley vs. Valeo in the form of campaign contributions. "

― Tim Kreider

8 " Just a thought for all you God-fearin', gun-lovin', Bible-thumpin' 2nd Amendment patriots. If it turns out Heaven's a gun-free zone, what's plan B??? "

― Quentin R. Bufogle

9 " A 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 à Kempis , The Inner Life

10 " You’re not safe to go back there,” he said.

“I’m going,” I returned.

“We’ll see.”

Jeez, there was just no shaking this guy.

“You do know that there’s this little thing called the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote?” I asked.

“I heard of that,” he said and there was a smile in his voice.

“And there’s this whole movement called fem… in… is…im.” I said it slowly, like he was a dim child. “Where women started working, demanding equal pay for equal work, raising their voices on issues of the day, taking back the night, stuff like that.”

He rolled into me, which made me roll onto my back.

“Sounds familiar.”

“Do you have an encyclopedia? Maybe we can look it up. If the words are too big for you to read, I’l read it out loud and explain as I go along.”

He got up on his elbow. “Only if you do it naked.” I slapped his shoulder. "

― Kristen Ashley , Rock Chick Redemption (Rock Chick, #3)

11 " In particular, we must take account of the well-known and striking saying of Jesus to the dying brigand beside him, recorded by Luke (23.43). 'Today,' he said, 'you will be with me in paradise.' 'Paradise' is not the final destination; it is a beautiful resting place on the way there. But notice. If there is anyone in the New Testament to whom we might have expected the classic doctrine of purgatory to apply, it would be this brigand. He had no time for amendment of life; no doubt he had all kinds of sinful thoughts and desires in what was left of his body. All the standard arguments in favour of purgatory apply to him. And yet Jesus assures him of his place in paradise, not in a few days or weeks, not if his friends say a lot of prayers and masses for him, but 'today. "

― N.T. Wright , For All the Saints: Remembering the Christians Departed

12 " The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, intact for over 200 years, guaranteed that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. After September 11th, 2001, those were just words on an old piece of paper, no longer a restriction of the Government’s overreaching power to shake down its subjects. "

― Kenneth Eade , A Patriot's Act (Brent Marks Legal Thrillers #1)

13 " Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine, and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite. The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.[Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 1968.] "

14 " The First Amendment contradicts the First Commandment. "

15 " My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to 'rejoice' as much as by anything else.

Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue. "

― C.S. Lewis , The Problem of Pain

16 " Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights - the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. "

― Christopher Hitchens

17 " Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting "

― Thomas Jefferson

18 " 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 tho "

19 " [T]here is both an intrinsic and instrumental value to privacy. Intrinsically, privacy is precious to the extent that it is a component of a liberty. Part of citizenship in a free society is the expectation that one's personal affairs and physical person are inviolable so long as one remains within the law. A robust concept of freedom includes the freedom from constant and intrusive government surveillance of one's life. From this perspective, Fourth Amendment violations are objectionable for the simple fact that the government is doing something it has no licence to do–that is, invading the privacy of a law-abiding citizen by monitoring her daily activities and laying hands on her person without any evidence of wrongdoing.

Privacy is also instrumental in nature. This aspect of the right highlights the pernicious effects, rather than the inherent illegitimacy, of intrusive, suspicionless surveillance. For example, encroachments on individual privacy undermine democratic institutions by chilling free speech. When citizens–especially those espousing unpopular viewpoints–are aware that the intimate details of their personal lives are pervasively monitored by government, or even that they could be singled out for discriminatory treatment by government officials as a result of their First Amendment expressive activities, they are less likely to freely express their dissident views. "

― John W. Whitehead , A Government Of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State

20 " The Second Amendment is timeless for our Founders grasped that self-defense is three-fold: every free individual must protect themselves against the evil will of the man, the mob and the state. "

― Tiffany Madison

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