Anthony Kennedy Quotes

I believe America went wrong in terms of respecting the First Amendment, the state of free speech on American college campuses and on the media and in academia.

I would bet there is no place in the United States where the First Amendment would survive intact.

I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you're allowed to censor it.

I think that, as Americans, we should never forget that when we tamper with freedom of speech, it is a very sensitive issue that affects all of our constitutional rights and privileges.

The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks.

And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history.

The Supreme Court has held that code is speech. And it doesn't matter that it's done on a computer or done face to face or done in a newspaper, reporting the facts of the world is protected speech.

Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

We had a responsibility to represent all people whose 1st Amendment rights were at risk

While the Executive may exclude an alien for almost any reason, it cannot do so solely because the Executive disagrees with the contents of the alien’s speech and therefore wants to prevent the alien from sharing this speech with a willing American audience.

We are the only country that allows and protects hate speech.

Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together.

If there is a bedrock principle of 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.

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.

We have the First Amendment to rely on whenever an elected official tries to impinge on our rights to speak.

Burn the flag; that's a freedom. Then I have the freedom to take it away from them and tell them how dumb they are.

The right to free speech is critical to our democracy.

In the U.S., the country that has always been lecturing the world about the value of freedoms - of freedom of speech, of everyone's right to speak up - the U.S. has now become a beacon, a leader, in this movement to shut everyone up. That's so disappointing.

Protecting free speech is not only a matter of principle, it is also pragmatic.

Nowhere does our Constitution say we cannot say something about another's religion. Nowhere does our Constitution say we cannot say anything that offends someone.

Oliver Darcy is a perpetual victim. He is constantly advocating for people to be banned and silenced. As a member of the media, Oliver Darcy should respect our First Amendment right.

I just think political correctness is a limitation on our First Amendment freedoms.

Individuals have a right to freedom of speech.

Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do not do so because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.