Matt Gaetz Quotes

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

Under the privilege of the 1st Amendment many, many ridiculous things are said.

As a young constitutional lawyer, I was put to the first amendment test when I was called on to defend racists and neo-Nazis. I really had no choice. Surely now we know that none of us do. Free speech is unequivocal, unpolitical, and indivisible.

Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech

Nowhere does our Constitution say we cannot say something about another's religion. Nowhere does our Constitution say we cannot say anything that offends someone.

Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do not do so because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.

Whether some of us may like it or not, the Supreme Court has interpreted the First [Amendment] as protecting speech that is indecent but not obscene.

I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you're allowed to censor it.

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.

The court has said you are entitled to robust speech on public sidewalks, even insulting speech.

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

If government were free to suppress disfavored speech by preventing potential speakers from being paid, there would not be much left of the 1st Amendment.

Implicit in the history of the 1st Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.

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

Being a bigot does not void your 1st Amendment rights.

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

We have the First Amendment to rely on whenever an elected official tries to impinge on our rights to speak.

We still have a First Amendment that protects your business and free speech.

In the U.S., free speech and the press are protected by the First Amendment. It has a clarity unmatched by modern legislators and declares that 'Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.'

I just think political correctness is a limitation on our First Amendment freedoms.

The First Amendment's protections have always put a great deal of responsibility in our hands: not only to respect the power of our own speech, but also to respect that same power in the hands of people we despise.

Individuals have a right to freedom of speech.

The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, because nobody ever tries to ban the other kind.

Our First Amendment expresses a far different calculus for regulating speech than for regulating nonexpressive conduct and that is as it should be. The right to swing your fist should end at the tip of my nose, but your right to express your ideas should not necessarily end at the lobes of my ears.

Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.