Steve Scalise Quotes

The right to free speech is critical to our democracy.

People have the right to protest - that's what democracy is all about. I have no problem with people exercising their democratic rights.

We have the right to peacefully assemble in the United States.

This is what democracy is all about. People have every right to protest whoever's in the White House, without fear of persecution. If this happened in Iran, people would be shot on the streets. This is the United States of America, and we have a First Amendment that protects this kind of speech.

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

Free speech is the cornerstone to every right we have.

And a democracy can't exist without free speech and the right to assemble. And that's what Americans tend to forget. And they're born into a culture where they take all of their freedoms for granted.

Any time someone carries a picket sign in front of the White House, that is the First Amendment in action.

No one respects the First Amendment more than I do. People have a right to express their concerns and their hopes and dreams to their government.

The First Amendment is very important, but it's not everything.

I begin to feel like most Americans don't understand the First Amendment, don't understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don't understand that it's the responsibility of the citizen to speak out.

Our birthright under the 1st Amendment is to foster the voices of dissent.

Free speech, free press, free religion, the right of free assembly, yes, the right of petition—well, they are still radical ideas.

The people have every right to meet in a peaceful manner and express and ventilate their grievance and criticize the policy and actions of any civilized Government.

After 200 years, the 1st Amendment remains only as strong, or as weak, as the citizens it is designed to protect.

Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. [...] The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it. [...] By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

The First Amendment rights, everybody has them.

We in the Netherlands have the right to demonstrate and the right to speak up if we don't agree with something.

The Founding Fathers' instructions were clear: The right to free speech includes bad speech; it means tolerance of ideas that many find obnoxious.

As a U.S. citizen, I cherish the First Amendment.

India is the world's largest democracy and everyone should have a right to voice their opinions.

I don't want our right to be able to speak and dissent to be taken away.

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

Our Founding Fathers were the first to articulate the reasons for their First Amendment, the same reasons given by Learned Hand, and by Justice Brennan in New York Times v. Sullivan . It is a lesson we keep forgetting and must relearn in each succeeding generation.

I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.