Wartime Restrictions Quotes

The right to control their own government according to constitutional forms is not one of the rights that the citizens of this country are called upon to surrender in time of war.

Presidents who restrict civil liberties, even in wartime, are usually judged harshly for it.

I also had a letter from Whitaker [her husband’s valet]. It was completely blacked out by a censor except for “My Lady” at the top. I wonder what he wrote.

That a district judge would overrule the president of the United States on a matter of border security in wartime is absurd.

I think this conflict [against terrorism] is going to require a suspension of freedom and rights unlike anything we have ever seen, at least since World War II.

[The] government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.

When you're in this type of conflict, when you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently.

Under the Occupation, we in Nantes were denied access to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It was therefore not until after the War was over that I saw the sea for the first time, in the vicinity of St Nazaire. It was there that I discovered the bunkers.

First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.

When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its efforts that their utterance will not be endured.

We have denounced the stupidities of the British censors and lamented the cutting off of our supply of German newspapers, even of scientific periodicals; and why, we asked, need any one get so heated by the words of a gentle philosopher like Bertrand Russell? And, now that we are actually in the war, these same things which we deprecated in the policy of European countries have become our policy.

When I left to go into apprenticeship in 1949, it was only four years after the war, and people don't realize, we still had tickets for butter, meat and so forth in France until 1947. It's not like the end of the war, everything was plentiful - it wasn't.

But the worst handicap we had the prohibition of naming individual units who had done the fighting.

One thing that does seem to me to be fairly consistent is that presidents who restrict civil liberties, even in wartime, are usually judged harshly for it. So most people agree that one of the worst stains on the reputation of FDR, who is widely considered a great president, is the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Likewise, Lincoln is judged harshly for the suspension of habeas corpus.

After December 7, 1941 our assets were frozen, we could only withdraw $100. We were placed under a curfew and could not leave our home at night.