Tom Smothers Quotes

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

The conservatives want to use the 2nd Amendment to shoot the 1st Amendment.

The First Amendment protects the Internet.

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

Freedom of speech is, to all Americans, as oxygen is to the human condition. It is a right that has been irreversibly programmed into our hard drive. We are free to speak our minds. An artist's right to express him or herself as best suits their art, is the artist's prerogative and it is guaranteed.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

Although I may find the type of programming seen during the 2004 Super Bowl and the 2003 Golden Globe Awards disgusting and disturbing, we must always work hard to defend the cherished freedoms so clearly outlined in our Constitution, including a healthy and free press.

The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks.

As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be.

Worrying that banning flag desecration would inhibit free speech reveals a misunderstanding of the flag's fundamental nature.

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.

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

I don't have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.

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.

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

Freedom of the Press and Constitutional Liberty must live or perish together.

They’re infringing on my 2nd Amendment rights so why can’t I interfere with their 1st Amendment privileges.

We all find flag burning repugnant. We find burning crosses repugnant. But they have been burning crosses longer than they have been burning flags and there has been no rush for a constitutional amendment to stop the burning of crosses.

The Constitution does not allow the unnecessary trammeling of free expression, even for the noblest of purposes.

The Republicans make a pastime of trashing the 1st Amendment while the Democrats pastime is trashing the 2nd 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

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.

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

The standard of what offends 'the common conscience of the community' conflicts ... with the command of the First Amendment. ... Certainly that standard would not be an acceptable one if religion, economics, politics or philosophy were involved. How does it become a constitutional standard when literature treating with sex is concerned? Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to 'sexual impurity' or has a tendency to 'excite lustful thoughts.' This is community censorship in one of its worst forms...