“The First Amendment isn't about free thought and free opinion and free belief. The First Amendment is about free exercise--the carrying into practice of religious principles, and beliefs, and convictions.”

“To hold that a state cannot, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, utilize its public school system to aid any or all religious faiths or sects in the dissemination of their doctrines and ideals does not, as counsel urge, manifest a governmental hostility to religion or religious teachings. A manifestation of such hostility would be at war with our national tradition as embodied in the First Amendment's guaranty of the free exercise of religion. For the First Amendment rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere. Or, as we said in the Everson case, the First Amendment has erected a wall between Church and State which must be kept high and impregnable.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

“If I were king, I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag. However, we have a First Amendment which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

“If I were king, I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag. However, we have a First Amendment which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged. And it is addressed, in particular, to speech critical of the government.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

“The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

“God is love but God has got nothing to do with religions. Same as love is free from any religious belief”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“God is love but God has got nothing to do with religions. Same as love is free from any religious belief.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“First one's free.”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

“The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend, one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

“The Second Amendment is about protecting your right to go deer hunting the same way that the First Amendment is about protecting your right to publish poetry.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger