Calvin Trillin Quotes

The Internet, as a First Amendment medium, hinges on free expression, and that means free advertising.

If government were free to suppress disfavored speech by preventing potential speakers from being paid, there would not be much left of the 1st Amendment.

If you buy the flag it's yours to burn.

The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.

Our First Amendment expresses a far different calculus for regulating speech than for regulating nonexpressive conduct and that is as it should be. The right to swing your fist should end at the tip of my nose, but your right to express your ideas should not necessarily end at the lobes of my ears.

The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.

This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment.

We all have the right to call each other names. Rudeness is a deeply held constitutional value.

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.

Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.

Think 'free speech,' not 'free beer.'

To speak his thoughts is every freeman's right, in peace and war, in council and in fight.

Antonin Scalia was saying, and Donald Trump knows this as well, the answer to it is not to punish people, to shut 'em up, to put 'em in jail. The answer is more speech. If there's some clown burning the flag, drape yourself in the flag and go run around right in the guy's face and start telling him how much you love America. Donald Trump's not gonna put anybody in jail. He's not gonna strip their citizenship. This is how Donald Trump tells people what he thinks about it.

The constitutional right of free speech has been declared to be the same in peace and war. In peace, too, men may differ widely as to what loyalty to our country demands, and an intolerant majority, swayed by passion or by fear, may be prone in the future, as it has been in the past, to stamp as disloyal opinions with which it disagrees.

Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license," and they will define freedom out of existence.

Depictions or expressions of sex, violence, crime are all permitted virtually without limit; but religion, it seems, never.No wonder many in America seem to believe that the court has become one more inclined to protect pornography than to protect religious expression.

All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!

I believe America went wrong in terms of respecting the First Amendment, the state of free speech on American college campuses and on the media and in academia.

Freedom of speech, the right to dissent, the right to protest, that is what America is about. And politically every leader in this country and every American has got to stand up against any form of violence. That is unacceptable.

Since we don't have a tyrant or a dictator, we can't put people who are burning flag in jail. But Donald Trump is telling you what he thinks of 'em. He's not gonna do anything of the sort. This is where people go off the rails with Trump, with this literal business and so fort

It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

The First Amendment provides the only kind of security system that can preserve a free government - one that leaves the way wide open for people to favor, discuss, advocate, or incite causes and doctrines however obnoxious and antagonistic such views may be to the rest of us.

It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. ... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, ... is fundamental to our free society.

The first amendment ensures not that speech will be fair, but that it will be free. It cannot be both.

I would bet there is no place in the United States where the First Amendment would survive intact.