“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.”
250 U.S. at 630.
1910s, Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919)
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 107
United States Supreme Court justice 1841–1935Related quotes

“Law. Law. That is what saves nations from the most imminent dangers.”
1826

First Debate with Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates http://www.bartleby.com/251/ of the 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate, at Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858). Lincoln later quoted himself and repeated this statement in his first Inaugural Address (4 March 1861) to emphasize that any acts of secession were over-reactions to his election. During the war which followed his election he eventually declared the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in those states in rebellion against the union, arguably as a war measure rather than as an entirely political or moral initiative.
1850s, Lincoln–Douglas debates (1858)

“Disarmament without checks is but a shadow — and a community without law is but a shell.”
1961, UN speech

Source: American Constitutional Law (1978), Approaches to Constituitonal Analysis

Wason v. Walter (1868), L. R. 4 Q. B. 93.

[199811242002.MAA26850@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Source: 1840s, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, 1847, p. 5