Hugo Black Quotes

The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.

Compelling a man by law to pay his money to elect candidates or advocate law or doctrines he is against differs only in degree, if at all, from compelling him by law to speak for a candidate, a party, or a cause he is against. The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the people of this country free to think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.

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.

When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.

I'm not interested in censorship. I like the First Amendment very much.

Freedom of the press and of religious opinion should be inviolate.

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.

The right to free speech is critical to our democracy.

The First Amendment, I think, is the jewel of our Constitution.

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

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

The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.

When the ACLU took my case and we got a ruling I think, for the first time, they could - the Congress could put out the report internally but they couldn't put it out at taxpayers' expense around the country. And I felt odd about that because I, in a way, I was interfering with free speech, but then, you can't always win.

I try to do that in this book without preaching - to try to do as you just said that you really have to defend the First Amendment rights of everybody.

I think that, as Americans, we should never forget that when we tamper with freedom of speech, it is a very sensitive issue that affects all of our constitutional rights and privileges.

I believe that freedom of speech and freedom of religion go hand-in-hand in America.

I'm as keen as the next person to preserve the right to free speech.

None of us would trade freedom of expression and of ideas for the narrowness of the public censor. America is the free market for people who have something to say, and need not fear to say it.

If, then, we truly believe in the liberty of conscience, speech and press, we must place ourselves again squarely upon the declaration of rights made by our forefathers, and defend the right of others to disagree with us, even about the beneficence of government

The Liberty of Conscience and of the Press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any authority of the United States

Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together.

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.

I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips — to make the tongue a convict. I passionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the children of the brain.

We're losing our freedom of speech. We are losing freedom of religion. We are losing freedom of the press.