Louis Fischer Quotes

It was not by accident or coincidence that the rights to freedom in speech and press were coupled in a single guaranty with the rights of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition for redress of grievances. All these, though not identical, are inseparable. They are cognate rights, and therefore are united in the first Article's assurance.

And a democracy can't exist without free speech and the right to assemble. And that's what Americans tend to forget. And they're born into a culture where they take all of their freedoms for granted.

The Constitution does not allow the unnecessary trammeling of free expression, even for the noblest of purposes.

This is a country where loose talk is encouraged by the Constitution.

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.

After 200 years, the 1st Amendment remains only as strong, or as weak, as the citizens it is designed to protect.

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.

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a radio frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others.... There is no sanctuary in the First Amendment for unlimited private censorship operating in a medium not open to all.... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.... It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the government itself or a private licensee. It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC.

The Constitution this week is being nibbled to death by small men with press secretaries.

The framers of the constitution were very literate men and they could write very well. When they wrote that “Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” they meant NO LAW. If they had wanted to have some laws or an emergency law, they would not have written, “NO LAW.” They were expert at the English language.

The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental rights of private property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.

The Constitution would not actually be a live enterprise without lobbies because that's the way one petitions for the redress of grievances.

I believe that the defendants had as much right to publish as the Government has to publish the Constitution.

Perpetuity is stamped upon the Constitution by the blood of our fathers. For this purpose was the principle of amendment inserted in the Constitution which all have sworn to support and in violation of which no state or states have the right to secede, much less dissolve the Union.

To secure a full effect to your object, it will be necessary that you should meet and consult together for the common good in your towns and counties. It is in dark and trying times that this constitutional privilege.

The Constitution guaranteed every individual’s rights but could not eliminate their prejudices.

The full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This 'liberty' is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints ... and which also recognizes, what a reasonable and sensitive judgment must, that certain interests require particularly careful scrutiny of the state needs asserted to justify their abridgment.

The Constitution nowhere mentions a specific right of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life, but the ‘liberty’ protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment covers more than those freedoms explicitly named in the Bill of Rights

In a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of ‘liberty’ must be broad indeed.

Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration [i.e., the First Amendment], the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship.

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

We do not expect that Congress is acquainted with our religious faith; but ... we do claim the guarantees of the Constitution and immunity from persecution on merely religious grounds.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.