Thomas L. Parker Quotes

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

While I unconditionally support the First Amendment, inciting violence against others due to their political affiliation is not constitutionally protected speech.

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 Supreme Court has held that code is speech. And it doesn't matter that it's done on a computer or done face to face or done in a newspaper, reporting the facts of the world is protected speech.

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

We had a responsibility to represent all people whose 1st Amendment rights were at risk

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.

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.

Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate 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.

In the U.S., free speech and the press are protected by the First Amendment. It has a clarity unmatched by modern legislators and declares that 'Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.'

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.

Freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like.

Freedom of speech is a great thing and we have said nothing that is not allowed.

The First and Fourteenth Amendments say that Congress and the States shall make "no law" which abridges freedom of speech or of the press. In order to sanction a system of censorship I would have to say that "no law" does not mean what it says, that "no law" is qualified to mean "some" laws. I cannot take this step.

Free speech not only lives, it rocks!

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

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

Free speech is the cornerstone to every right we have.

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.

Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.