Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy (agent) is greater than his principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid. It is not to be supposed that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their will to that of their constituents. A Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by judges as fundamental law. If there should happen to be a irreconcilable variance between the two, the Constitution is to be preferred to the statute."

~ Alexander Hamilton  

"If the legislature clearly misinterprets a constitutional provision, the frequent repetition of the wrong will not create a right."

~ Amos v. Mosley  

"The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting."

~ Justice William J. Brennan  

"Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none."

~ Edmund Burke  

"The basis of the First Amendment is the hypothesis that speech can rebut speech, propaganda will answer propaganda, free debate of ideas will result in the wisest governmental policies."

~ Frederick M. Vinson  

"Those who call themselves 'liberals' today are asking for policies which are precisely the opposite of those policies which the liberals of the nineteenth century advocated in their liberal programs. The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial -- that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions."

~ Ludwig von Mises  

"Freedom to publish means freedom for all and not for some. Freedom to publish is guaranteed by the constitution but freedom to continue to prevent others from publishing is not."

~ Justice Hugo L. Black  

I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country... Only the emergency that makes it immediately dangerous to leave the correction of evil counsels to time warrants making any exception to the sweeping command, 'Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech.'

~ Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.  

"Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that “freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license,” and they will define freedom out of existence."

~ Voltairine de Cleyre  

"The First and Fourteenth Amendments say that Congress and the States shall make "no law" which abridges freedom of speech or of the press. In order to sanction a system of censorship I would have to say that "no law" does not mean what it says, that "no law" is qualified to mean "some" laws. I cannot take this step."

~ William O. Douglas  

"Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes."

~ Felix Frankfurter

"I cannot assent to the view, if it be meant that the legislature may impair or abridge the rights of a free press and of free speech whenever it thinks that the public welfare requires that it be done. The public welfare cannot override constitutional privilege."

~ John Marshall Harlan  

"There is one, and only one, thing in modern society
more hideous than crime -- namely, repressive justice."

~ Simone Weil  

"Emergency does not create power.
Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish
the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved.
The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency.
Its grants of power to the federal government and
its limitations of the power of the States
were determined in the light of emergency,
and they are not altered by emergency."

~ Justice Charles Evans Hughes  

"No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law,
and no courts are bound to enforce it."

~ American Jurisprudence, 2nd Edition