Barney Frank Quotes

The American people must be assured that no federal agency can trample their First Amendment rights.

I understand that unless you have a government of laws, rather than a government of people, you cannot protect dissent. And I understand, as a woman who probably would have been burned in the marketplace for witchcraft only about 200 years ago, that I need the First Amendment more than anybody does. And that even if I am repelled by child pornography or Bob Guccione's productions, that I have to protect those things, because essentially it's in my self-interest to do so.

No matter what the legislature may say, a man has the right to make his speech, print his handbill, compose his newspaper, and deliver his sermon without asking anyone's permission. The contrary suggestion is abhorrent to our traditions.

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

… our respect for First Amendment freedoms is one of the few values that still rises above partisan politics.

The First Amendment rights, everybody has them.

I think that freedom of speech is just that, and groups have the right to support or oppose issues that are going to affect them as well as individuals do.

The FBI holds sacred the rights of individuals to peacefully exercise their First Amendment freedoms.

Individuals have a right to freedom of speech.

The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.

Censorship does not interfere with the constitutional rights of every American to sit alone in a dark room in the nude and cuss.

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

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.

The First Amendment reads more like a dream than a law, and no other nation, so far as I know, has been crazy enough to include such a dream among its fundamental legal documents. I defend it because it has been so successful for two centuries in preserving our freedom and increasing our vitality, knowing that all arguments in support of it are certain to sound absurd.

I know the constitution in Oregon was passed in 1859. Free expression of opinion.

I want to regain my First Amendment rights.

Free speech is the cornerstone to every right we have.

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.

As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject, being amenable to the laws of my country for the same.

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

The court has said you are entitled to robust speech on public sidewalks, even insulting speech.

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.

So the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for, and sometimes winning and sometimes losing, the fight for First Amendment rights in comics and, more generally, for freedom of speech.

It does not help when an administration, in response to American attacks on American soil and American individuals, the administration ends up asking Americans to give up their First Amendment rights for which our service members are fighting.