“The chief wrong which false prophets do to their following is not financial… But the real harm is on the mental and spiritual plane. There are those who hunger and thirst after higher values which they feel wanting in their humdrum lives. They live in mental confusion or moral anarchy, and seek vaguely for truth and beauty and moral support. When they are deluded and then disillusioned, cynicism and confusion follow. The wrong of these things, as I see it, is not in the money the victims part with half so much as in the mental and spiritual poison they get. But that is precisely the thing the Constitution put beyond the reach of the prosecutor, for the price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.”

— Robert H. Jackson

The bolded section is often incorrectly reported as "The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish".
78 U.S. 94-95
Judicial opinions, United States v. Ballard (1944)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Robert H. Jackson 96

American judge 1892–1954

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