Michael Badnarik Quotes

If the 1st Amendment means anything, it means that the state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.

I think if you open the door to government control of television, then you let in a host of questions about rights.

I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important.

Our founding fathers could not have foreseen that freedom of the press might eventually be threatened just as much by media consolidation as by government.

I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And it's equaled by another right just as powerful: the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people.

Freedom of speech means freedom for those who you despise, and freedom to express the most despicable views. It also means that the government cannot pick and choose which expressions to authorize and which to prevent.

It's very difficult to have just a little bit of censorship.

If you don't think a television news show represents the truth, you can turn off your TV. If you don't think a magazine represents the truth, you can cancel your subscription. You have the right to expose yourself to whatever information you want. But to have the government prescribing what the truth is or limiting the information available for the citizen is contrary to the 1st Amendment.

This reporter approaches the matter with rather fresh memories of friends in Austria, Germany and Italy who either died or went into exile because they refused to admit the right of their government to determine what they should say, read, write or think…. Movies should be judged by what appears on the screen, newspapers by what appears in print and radio by what comes out of the loudspeaker. The personal beliefs of the individuals involved would not seem to be a legitimate field of inquiry. When bankers, or oil or railroad men are hauled before a congressional committee, it is not customary to question them about their beliefs.

If one seeks to disseminate his ideas by means of periodicals or pamphlets, the post-office officials may decline to transmit anything that does not suit their taste; and the courts have decided that the United States post-office has precisely the same right to refuse to carry The Masses that it has to exclude sulfuric acid and dynamite from the mails.

The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

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.

Mass protests often get books or films banned, but very few people take to the streets to challenge the right of the State to decide what we can read or watch - it's still someone else's problem.

Censorship, telling people how to live their lives I completely disagree with.

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick.

As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.

Americans cherish our liberty and don't want government or corporations to take away our freedoms.

People may be due the benefits of a democratic electoral process. But in the United States, content curators appropriately have a First Amendment right to present their content as they see fit.

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

Do we really want the FCC to conduct investigations and issue warnings to radio talk show hosts nationwide who simply discuss the important issues of our time? The Constitution says 'freedom of speech,' not 'freedom of government-approved fair speech in rationed amounts.'

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo should be developing new technologies to bypass government sensors and barriers to the Internet; but instead, they agreed to guard the gates themselves.

The Libertarian position on the freedom of speech is a strong support of freedom of speech, and we oppose government intervention in controlling what is or is not moral.

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.

The marketing department of any given publishing house has far more power over free expression in America than any government office.