George Carlin Quotes

If a jerk burns the flag, America is not threatened, democracy is not under siege, freedom is not at risk.

Burning the flag is a form of expression. Speech doesn't just mean written words or oral words. It could be semaphore. And burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea - I hate the government, the government is unjust, whatever.

A star for every State, and a State for every star.

We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.

Who personally has ever witnessed a flag burning?

It is an unmistakable statement of contempt for a government to burn its flag.

Burning the American flag should be punishable by loss of citizenship.

Flag-burning is plain wrong, and I'll stand up for free speech - even speech I don't like.

I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.

The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.

Burn my Flag and I will shoot you........but I'll shoot you with a lot of love, like a good American

There is the National Flag. He must be cold, indeed, who can look upon its folds rippling in the breeze without pride of country. If he be in a foreign land, the flag is companionship and country itself, with all its endearment...The very colors have a language which was recognized by our fathers; white is for purity; red, for valor; blue, for justice. And altogether, bunting, stripes, stars, and colors, blazing in the sky, make the flag of our country, to be cherished by all our hearts, to be upheld by all our hands.

When I think of the flag.... I see alternate strips of parchment upon which are written the rights of liberty and justice, and stripes of blood to vindicate those rights, and then, in the corner, a prediction of the blue serene into which every nation may swim which stands for these great things.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself.

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle: and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. In poetic minds and in popular enthusiasm this feeling becomes closely associated with the soil and the symbols of the country. But the secret sanctification of the soil and the symbol is the idea which they represent, and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol, as a lover kisses with rapture the glove of his mistress and wears a lock of her hair upon his heart.

I say not one penny more to countries that are burning our flag.

America is a simplified ideological abstraction, an emotive symbol represented by other abstract symbols like the flag. It is the object of a faithlike devotion, unencumbered by honest history.

Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country; he should lisp the praise of liberty and of those illustrious heroes and statesmen who have wrought a revolution in her favor.

Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

Our flag is our identity, and we can't disrespect or let anyone else disrespect our identity.

To me, the flag represents the greatest ideals of the United States of America, not the worst, but different people look at different things and have different feelings about it. That's what freedom of expression is all about.

I think our fans and NFL fans are very passionate about our country and our men and women who fight for our freedom, our freedom to free speech and free protest for that matter.

We have a First Amendment right to burn the flag as symbolic speech. The Constitution protects that right. To spend time and effort on this is ridiculous.

When you're driving into D.C. as a young kid and you go over the Key Bridge and see the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and Capitol Building, they become a part of the landscape for you. You are also constantly in contact with this idea that history, and the people that made it, are being remembered.

The same liberals who want to protect the constitutional right of people like Colin Kaepernick to symbolically reject America by taking a knee were the ones quick to criticize Tim Tebow for bending a knee to pray and thank God on the field.