Frank Zappa Quotes

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

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

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

The First Amendment means everything to me.

I believe in the First Amendment.

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

There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.

The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.

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

I love the First Amendment. Nobody loves it better than me. Nobody. I mean, who uses it more than I do?

There is no security in the profered system, either for the rights of conscience or the liberty of the Press.

The beauty of our country is that when it was founded that they took some time to lay out civil liberties in the first 10 Amendments - the Bill of Rights. I'm a firm believer in those civil liberties and the ability to have your own opinion.

Do the people of this land…desire to preserve those [liberties] protected by the First Amendment… If so, let them withstand all beginnings of encroachment. For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanquished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch for a saving hand while yet there was time.

Of the five rights listed in the First Amendment. - religion, speech, press, assembly, petition - the very first right protected is freely exercising our religion.

I have four children, and I want them to grow up in a country that has a working First Amendment.

When I speak to students, I tell them why we have a First Amendment. I tell them about the Committees of Correspondence. I tell them how in a secret meeting of the Raleigh Tavern in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who did not agree with each other, started a Committee of Correspondence.

If America has a civic religion, the First Amendment is its central article of faith.

That wall, embodied in the First Amendment, is perhaps America's most important contribution to political progress on this planet.

The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today as when the Bill of Rights was first written.

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.

Americans may not always live up to the Bill of Rights, but Americans do not ban books.

The framers of the constitution were very literate men and they could write very well. When they wrote that “Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” they meant NO LAW. If they had wanted to have some laws or an emergency law, they would not have written, “NO LAW.” They were expert at the English language.

We cannot accept that democratic freedoms need to be abrogated to protect Islam.

Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion all have a double aspect—freedom of thought and freedom of action.

The passage of the 1st Amendment is the single most dramatic and significant turning point of a revolutionary transition to religious freedom.