ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN

Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise.

Our greatest present disloyalty to the Constitution lies in the fact that we do not study and criticize it as did the men who devised and adopted it.

The Amendment might have said, “Except in times and situations involving 'clear and present danger' to the national security, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.” Or it might have read, “Only when, in the judgment of the legislature, the interests of order and security render such action advisable shall Congress abridge the freedom of speech.” But the writers of the Amendment did not adopt either of these phrasings or anything like them.

Civilization is not a burden. It is an opportunity.

Freedom is always wise.

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom.

Free citizens have two distinct sets of civil liberties. As the makers of the laws, they have duties and responsibilities which require an absolute freedom. As the subjects of the laws, they have possessions and rights, to which belongs a relative freedom.

I differ from most of you on most of the issues of life, and I’m going to keep it up.

The commonly urged identification of Constitutional freedom with the freedom of business enterprise is an illusion which could be entertained only in a society which is too busy in seeking success to give time or energy to finding out what success is.

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise. That is the faith, the experimental faith, by which we Americans have undertaken to live.

Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise.

Democracy is the art of thinking independently together.

In a society pledged to self-government, it is never true that, in the long run, the security of the nation is endangered by the people.

Our greatest present disloyalty to the Constitution lies in the fact that we do not study and criticize it as did the men who devised and adopted it.

The commonly urged identification of Constitutional freedom with the freedom of business enterprise is an illusion which could be entertained only in a society which is too busy in seeking success to give time or energy to finding out what success is.

The Amendment might have said, “Except in times and situations involving 'clear and present danger' to the national security, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.” Or it might have read, “Only when, in the judgment of the legislature, the interests of order and security render such action advisable shall Congress abridge the freedom of speech.” But the writers of the Amendment did not adopt either of these phrasings or anything like them.

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom.

I differ from most of you on most of the issues of life, and I’m going to keep it up.

No nation can be free unless it is strong enough and active enough to control, whenever necessary, every private individual or group whose action affects the general welfare

Our greatest present disloyalty to the Constitution lies in the fact that we do not study and criticize it as did the men who devised and adopted it. They met novel and desperate situations by establishing unheard-of and revolutionary forms of government.

Americans, by means of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of the Constitution, entered into a social contract which the successive generations assent to yet change its meanings with the changing contexts of different times.

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

Free citizens have two distinct sets of civil liberties. As the makers of the laws, they have duties and responsibilities which require an absolute freedom. As the subjects of the laws, they have possessions and rights, to which belongs a relative freedom.

The question, ‘Who are the People of the United States?’ was never directly dealt with by the Constitutional Convention. On the contrary, that most important of all issues concerning Freedom was referred to the several states, to be dealt with by each of them in their own particular manner

… the people as the fourth branch of government

Civilization is not a burden. It is an opportunity.

There is, I think, nothing in the world more futile than the attempt to find out how a task should be done when one has not yet decided what the task is.

Freedom is always wise.

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise. That is the faith, the experimental faith, by which we Americans have undertaken to live.