Jeffrey Rosen Quotes

You want your privacy as a human being.

You watch the Supreme Court in action on these cases, and they are a conflicted court. However, when it comes to speech issues generally, the court has been protective.

We have to find places that we protect away from government so that we can all be the unique and interesting and, in my case, somewhat deviant people we'd like to be.

A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.

The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police.

If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion.

Well I've already made it clear that it's a matter for individuals in exercising their own judgement, their own consciences to speak freely on matters of policy.

Enlightenment values of individual freedom are manifested best in individual acts of criticism and defiance.

Citizens United fought to defend our right to free speech - and won a great victory in the United States Supreme Court.

There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.

I don't believe in outing people. It's up to the individual, but there's nothing wrong putting the pressure on.

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

The privacy and dignity of our citizens are being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen – a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person's] life.

The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights.

A right of privacy doesn't emerge from any single part of the Constitution. The right of privacy emerges from the Constitution as a whole.

The future of the Second Amendment depends on the free exercise of the First Amendment.

Much of my work strikes me as pretty unified: as a lawyer, working in several areas, I have thought about how to promote freedom of speech broadly for everyone.

Freedom of choice and free speech without fear must be defended.

I always knew it'd be difficult to balance the right of privacy and the right of free speech. I think that is a tension that we've seen in court case after court case and law after law. And we always strive to find that right balance.

I had an upbringing to respect other people's privacy and their right to be and choose what they want, and I expect - no, demand - no less for myself.

I have I guess 3 passions. One is the Constitution. The other is jazz and the other is being an atheist prolifer which, of course, gets me in a lot of trouble - all of which combines into free expression.

Both John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela use the same three-word phrase which in my mind says it all, which is ‘Freedom is indivisible. You can’t slice it up, otherwise it ceases to be freedom. You can dislike Charlie Hebdo … but the fact that you dislike them has nothing to do with their right to speak.

Censorship does not interfere with the constitutional rights of every American to sit alone in a dark room in the nude and cuss.

The free state offers what a police state denies - the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual.

Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.