Helen Thomas Quotes

My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been on record for years in law journals and books as championing the rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state.

Our oath is not to a politician, or to the party in power, or to the President. It is to the Constitution.

As Members of Congress, we swear an oath to uphold the United States Constitution. It means something to be an American because we believe in our country, we believe in our people, and we believe in our constitution.

It is going to take a long time to switch Egypt into a democracy.

We have to worry about protecting the Constitution.

I begin to feel like most Americans don't understand the First Amendment, don't understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don't understand that it's the responsibility of the citizen to speak out.

The laws have become so straight-jacketing that presidents and their aides dare not keep journals or diaries, lest they be subpoenaed by avid special prosecutors.

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.

Rather than waiting for future trials to determine rules that will impact every citizen, Congress should step in and write a law that takes every American's rights into consideration.

I ask the rights to pursue happiness by having a voice in that government to which I am accountable.

The right to dissent is the only thing that makes life tolerable for a judge of an appellate court... the affairs of government could not be conducted by democratic standards without it.

The judicial cannot prescribe to the legislative departments of the government limitations upon exercise of its acknowledged powers. The power to tax may be exercised oppressively on persons, but the responsibility … not to the courts, but to the people by whom its members are elected.

Are all the laws to go unexecuted and the government itself go to pieces, lest civil liberties be violated?

You’ve got to have safeguards [on law enforcement authorities] if we’re going to continue to have the freedom we’ve had for the past 200 years.

Be most on guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

There exists in modem America the necessity for protecting all of us from arbitrary action by governments more powerful and more pervasive than any in our ancestors’ time.

The Habeas Corpus Act is the most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny.

I am anxious that the Justice Department should be a force for the protection of the people's liberties.

It must never be forgotten ... that the liberties of the people are not so safe under the gracious manner of government as by the limitation of power.

The Patriot Act is the most egregious piece of legislation to ever leave Congress since the Alien and Sedition Acts. John Ashcroft and every member of Congress who voted for it should be indicted.

… we have a fighting constitution

If the authority which the Constitution has confided to the judiciary department ... may ... be usurped by the military power, at its discretion, the people of the United States are no longer living under a government of laws, but every citizen holds life, liberty, and property at the will and pleasure of the army officer in whose military district he may happen to be found.

The people have a right to assemble together, to consult for their common good-to instruct their representatives, and to apply to the legislature for redress of grievances, by address, petition or remonstrance.