Larry Craig Quotes

Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.

The Supreme Court decision [Texas v. Johnson, 1989] does not in any way indicate the government is backing off from forcing the flag on people. They just don't want to look too dictatorial in the way they do it.

Offensive or not, those who burn the flag to express their views are exercising a right that our founding generation fought a revolution to secure.

If the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and press is to mean anything, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community.

Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation. By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

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.

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 court has said you are entitled to robust speech on public sidewalks, even insulting speech.

There is no reason for the government to limit political speech.

One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the 1st Amendment.

But why shouldn't I speak out? Don't you speak out in this country?

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.

I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the Constitution to a man who will burn the Constitution and then wrap himself in the flag.

There is nothing more American than dissent.

If government were free to suppress disfavored speech by preventing potential speakers from being paid, there would not be much left of the 1st Amendment.

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

Implicit in the history of the 1st Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.

They’re infringing on my 2nd Amendment rights so why can’t I interfere with their 1st Amendment privileges.

Who personally has ever witnessed a flag burning?

Our birthright under the 1st Amendment is to foster the voices of dissent.

We do not debar Congress from all action upon the freedom of speech. Legislation that abridges that freedom is forbidden, but not legislation to enlarge and enrich it

If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.

In the national debate about a serious issue, it is the expression of the minority's viewpoint that most demands the protection of the First Amendment.

There is no indication - either in the text of the Constitution or in our cases interpreting it - that a separate judicial category exists for the American flag alone. ... We decline ... therefore to create for the flag an exception to the … principles protected by the First Amendment.

The censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression.