Howard Zinn Quotes

The same Constitution that allows her the right, if she wants to, to sit there and say nothing, allows these groups the right to petition their government for redress.

The First Amendment says that we can protest and call to - on our government to address grievances.

However, they ignore the fact that the First Amendment is intended to protect only against government sanctions for exercising free speech rights, not private actions.

The right of the people to peacefully assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances is now worth a pitcher of warm spit. That's because TV will not come and treat it respectfully. Television is really something.

You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

It's never a good thing to see a government agency talk in secret about the need to 'control protestors' - especially when that agency is charged with protecting the homeland against terrorists, not nonviolent demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable dissent.

In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of 'overpermiticisation' - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment.

The Bill of Rights

People have rights and government must be kept from trampling on them.

Constitutional rights must always come before sensitivities.

Our founding fathers made no mistake when they included the right to peaceably assemble among the first tenets of democracy.

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.

I am for the First Amendment from the first word to the last. I believe it means what it says.

I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.

I've always been a big supporter of the Constitutional right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition government for redress of grievances. It's just that I never envisioned it taking the form of thousands of people screaming 'you asshole!' at me.

I love the First Amendment. Nobody loves it better than me. Nobody. I mean, who uses it more than I do?

The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees, like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches.

Any time someone carries a picket sign in front of the White House, that is the First Amendment in action.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be.

History has shown us that, on extraordinarily rare occasions, it becomes necessary for the federal government to intervene on behalf of individuals whose 14th Amendment rights to legal due process and equal protection may be violated by a state.

Obviously, I'll keep fighting to uphold the Constitution.

No one respects the First Amendment more than I do. People have a right to express their concerns and their hopes and dreams to their government.

The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.