Jimmy Wales Quotes

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.

The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks.

Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

So sometimes the facts are good and sometimes the facts are bad, the important thing from the point of view of a principle as broad and important as freedom of speech is that the courts articulate and set forth in a very protective way what those principles are.

We are the only country that allows and protects hate speech.

If there is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

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

I'm really proud of this Supreme Court and the way they've been dealing with the issue of First Amendment political speech.

I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you're allowed to censor it.

[E]rroneous statement … must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to be given the breathing space that they need ... to survive.

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

We do not debar Congress from all action upon the freedom of speech. Legislation that abridges that freedom is forbidden, but not legislation to enlarge and enrich it

For the first time in the 182 years since the founding if the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says.

Under the privilege of the 1st Amendment many, many ridiculous things are said.

There is no indication - either in the text of the Constitution or in our cases interpreting it - that a separate judicial category exists for the American flag alone. ... We decline ... therefore to create for the flag an exception to the … principles protected by the First Amendment.

Authoritative interpretations of the First Amendment guarantees have consistently refused to recognize an exception for any test of truth — whether administered by judges, juries, or administrative officials — and especially one that puts the burden of proving truth on the speaker.

The history of the application of laws designed to suppress the obscene demonstrates convincingly that the power of government can be invoked under them against great art or literature, scientific treatises, or works exciting social controversy. Mistakes of the past prove that there is a strong countervailing interest to be considered in the freedoms guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation. By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

We have the First Amendment to rely on whenever an elected official tries to impinge on our rights to speak.

We still have a First Amendment that protects your business and free speech.

Nowhere does our Constitution say we cannot say something about another's religion. Nowhere does our Constitution say we cannot say anything that offends someone.

I just think political correctness is a limitation on our First Amendment freedoms.

Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do not do so because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.

While even pornography is protected as free speech, the courts have consciously undermined religious speech and freedom of religion for years.