Quotes about amendment

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Source: The New Left: The Resurgence of Radicalism Among American Students (1966), p. 43

Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)

1780s, Letter to Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Interview with Radio.com (July 6, 2016)

Concurring in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

Summations, Chapter 52

Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (20 June, 2005) http://frwebgate5.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=239772330196+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

Source: The Power Elite (1956), P. 270-272; key shifts in power relations which Mills contends have brought us to the current state.

An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex. P. 54 https://archive.org/details/essayindefenceof00aste

Associated Press policy Q&A, "Flag Amendment," Jan 25, 2004.

1870s, Message to the Senate and House of Representatives (1870)

Of Jesting.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

Interview Fox News Channel (15 September 1997)
Context: You could say that the paparazzi and the tabloids are sort of the "assault weapons" of the First Amendment. They're ugly, a lot of people don't like them, but they're protected by the First Amendment — just as "assault weapons" are protected by the Second Amendment.

1870s, Message to the Senate and House of Representatives (1870)
Context: In his first annual message to Congress the same views are forcibly presented, and are again urged in his eighth message. I repeat that the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution completes the greatest civil change and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life. The change will be beneficial in proportion to the heed that is given to the urgent recommendations of Washington. If these recommendations were important then, with a population of but a few millions, how much more important now, with a population of 40,000,000, and increasing in a rapid ratio.

1870s, Seventh State of the Union Address (1875)
Context: As the primary step, therefore, to our advancement in all that has marked our progress in the past century, I suggest for your earnest consideration, and most earnestly recommend it, that a constitutional amendment be submitted to the legislatures of the several States for ratification, making it the duty of each of the several States to establish and forever maintain free public schools adequate to the education of all the children in the rudimentary branches within their respective limits, irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religions; forbidding the teaching in said schools of religious, atheistic, or pagan tenets; and prohibiting the granting of any school funds or school taxes, or any part thereof, either by legislative, municipal, or other authority, for the benefit or in aid, directly or indirectly, of any religious sect or denomination, or in aid or for the benefit of any other object of any nature or kind whatever.

Gompers v. United States, 233 U.S. 604, 610 (1914).
1910s

Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 260 U.S. 22, 31 (1922).
1920s

Source: The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy: A Study in Crisis in American Power Politics (1941), P. 297

&quot;Sen. Franken&#x27;s Speech to Free Press Group in Minneapolis&quot; (19 August 2010) http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=news&amp;id=1044 <br class="br">Context: Net neutrality is the First Amendment issue of our time. Today, a blog can load as fast as the Wall Street Journal — and, if the blog is good, it can get more traffic than any media conglomerate. But if bigger companies can pay for faster, priority Internet access, that blogger no longer has a shot. And these big companies know that when they pay for access, they win. They want preferred treatment on the Internet like the preferred treatment they get in the rest of their lives.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., dissenting, Adkins, et al., Constituting the Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia, v. Children's Hospital of the District of Columbia; Same v. Lyons, 261 U.S. 569–70 (1923).
1920s

1870s, Sixth State of the Union Address (1874)
Context: Enjoined by the Constitution 'to take care that the laws be faithfully executed', and convinced by undoubted evidence that violations of said act had been committed and that a widespread and flagrant disregard of it was contemplated, the proper officers were instructed to prosecute the offenders, and troops were stationed at convenient points to aid these officers, if necessary, in the performance of their official duties. Complaints are made of this interference by Federal authority; but if said amendment and act do not provide for such interference under the circumstances as above stated, then they are without meaning, force, or effect, and the whole scheme of colored enfranchisement is worse than mockery and little better than a crime. Possibly Congress may find it due to truth and justice to ascertain, by means of a committee, whether the alleged wrongs to colored citizens for political purposes are real or the reports thereof were manufactured for the occasion.

Comments at the University of Florida (21 October 2005), as quoted in &quot;Coulter courts Gainesville&quot; by Jessica Riffel, in The Alligator (21 October 2005) http://www.alligator.org/pt2/051021coulter.php. <br class="br">2005 <br class="br">Context: The Democrats complain about the Republican base being nuts … The nuts are their entire party … They&#x27;re always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let&#x27;s do it. Let&#x27;s repress them. … Frankly, I&#x27;m not a big fan of the First Amendment.

Declaration of Conscience (1950)
Context: I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul-searching — for us to weigh our consciences — on the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America — on the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.
I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.
Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined.

Of Great Place
Essays (1625)
Context: It is an assured sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom honor amends. For honor is, or should be, the place of virtue and as in nature, things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self, whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. Use the memory of thy predecessor, fairly and tenderly; for if thou dost not, it is a debt will sure be paid when thou art gone. If thou have colleagues, respect them, and rather call them, when they look not for it, than exclude them, when they have reason to look to be called. Be not too sensible, or too remembering, of thy place in conversation, and private answers to suitors; but let it rather be said, When he sits in place, he is another man.

1820s, Letter to A. Coray (1823)
Context: But, whatever be the constitution, great care must be taken to provide a mode of amendment, when experience or change of circumstances shall have manifested that any part of it is unadapted to the good of the nation. In some of our States it requires a new authority from the whole people, acting by their representatives, chosen for this express purpose, and assembled in convention. This is found ' too difficult for remedying the imperfections which experience develops from time to time in an organization of the first impression. A greater facility of amendment is certainly requisite to maintain it in a course of action accommodated to the times and changes through which we are ever passing. In England the constitution may be altered by a single act of the legislature, which amounts to the having no constitution at all. In some of our States, an act passed by two different legislatures, chosen by the people, at different and successive elections, is sufficient to make a change in the constitution. As this mode may be rendered more or less easy, by requiring the approbation of fewer or more successive legislatures, according to the degree of difficulty thought sufficient, and yet safe, it is evidently the best principle which can be adopted for constitutional amendments.

Writing for the court, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).
Context: Our Founders were no more willing to let the content of their prayers and their privilege of praying whenever they pleased be influenced by the ballot box than they were to let these vital matters of personal conscience depend upon the succession of monarchs. The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to stand as a guarantee that neither the power nor the prestige of the Federal Government would be used to control, support or influence the kinds of prayer the American people can say -- that the people's religions must not be subjected to the pressures of government for change each time a new political administration is elected to office. Under that Amendment's prohibition against governmental establishment of religion, as reinforced by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, government in this country, be it state or federal, is without power to prescribe by law any particular form of prayer which is to be used as an official prayer in carrying on any program of governmentally sponsored religious activity.

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)
Context: The civil rights establishment, led by the NAACP, fought the good fight that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. They fought that fight under the banner of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which reflected the equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. The classic statement of this principle is to be found in Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, the infamous 1896 decision that enshrined "separate but equal" into constitutional law for more than half a century, "In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior dominant ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved".

Freemasonry, p. 187; in the final sentence here, inimitable perhaps should be &quot;inimicable&quot; <br class="br">Everything Is Under Control (1998) <br class="br">Context: Many tribal peoples have both all-male and all-female secret societies, which help maintain the cultural values or reality tunnel. Freemasonry is certainly the largest, and probably the oldest, and still the most controversial of the all-male secret societies surviving in our world. No two scholars can even agree on how old it is, much less on how &quot;good&quot; or &quot;evil&quot; it is. … Although Masonry is often denounced as either a political or religious &quot;conspiracy&quot;, Freemasons are forbidden to discuss either politics or religion within the lodge. Gary Dryfoos of the Massachusetts Institute of technology, who maintains the best Masonic site on the web http://web.mit.edu/dryfoo/Masonry/, always stresses these points and also offers personal testimony that after many years as a Mason, including high ranks, he has not yet been asked to engage in pagan or Satanic rituals or plot for any reason for or against any political party. The more rabid anti-Masons, of course, dismiss such testimony as flat lies.<br>The enemies of Masonry, who are usually Roman Catholics or Fundamentalist Protestants, insist that the rites of the order contain &quot;pagan&quot; elements, e. g., the Yule festival, the Spring Solstice festival, the dead-and-resurrected martyr (Jesus, allegedly historical, to Christians; Hiram, admittedly allegorical, to Masons). All these and many other elements in Christianity and Masonry have a long prehistory in paganism, as documented in the 12 volumes of Sir James George Frazer&#x27;s Golden Bough.<br>The major offense of Masonry to orthodox churches is that it, like our First Amendment, encourages equal tolerance for all religions, and this tends, somewhat, to lessen dogmatic allegiance to any one religion. Those who insist you must accept their dogma fervently and renounce all others as devilish errors, correctly see this Masonic tendency as inimitable [sic] — to their faith.

1961, Address to ANPA
Context: Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution- -not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants" — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.
This means greater coverage and analysis of international news — for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security — and we intend to do it.

1870s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1871)
Context: I can hardly believe that any person can be found who will not admit that every one of these provisions is just. They are all asserted, in some form or other, in our Declaration or organic law. But the Constitution limits only the action of Congress, and is not a limitation on the States. This amendment supplies that defect, and allows Congress to correct the unjust legislation of the States, so far that the law which operates upon one man shall operate equally upon all. Whatever law punishes a white man for a crime shall punish the black man precisely in the same way and to the same degree. Whatever law protects the white man shall afford equal protection to the black man. Whatever means of redress is afforded to one shall be afforded to all. Whatever law allows the white man to testify in court shall allow the man of color to do the same. These are great advantages over their present codes. Now different degrees of punishment are inflicted, not on account of the magnitude of the crime, but according to the color of the skin. Now color disqualifies a man from testifying in courts or being tried in the same way as white men.

On the Don Imus show (28 April 2006)
2000s, 2006
Context: I work in Washington and I know that money corrupts. And I and a lot of other people were trying to stop that corruption. Obviously, from what we've been seeing lately, we didn't complete the job. But I would rather have a clean government than one where 'First Amendment rights' are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government.

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

On the role of outraged librarians protesting when publisher HarperCollins insisted he rewrite Stupid White Men to be less critical of President Bush. &quot;Muzzling Moore&quot; Salon (7 January 2002) http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2002/01/07/moore/print.html <br class="br">2002 <br class="br">Context: Librarians see themselves as the guardians of the First Amendment. … You got a thousand Mother Joneses at the barricades! I love the librarians, and I am grateful for them!

Dissenting in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)
Judicial opinions

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)
Context: Thus the ideal of democracy is reached at last: it has become a psychic impossibility for a gentleman to hold office under the Federal Union, save by a combination of miracles that must tax the resourcefulness even of God. The fact has been rammed home by a constitutional amendment: every office-holder, when he takes oath to support the Constitution, must swear on his honour that, summoned to the death-bed of his grandmother, he will not take the old lady a bottle of wine. He may say so and do it, which makes him a liar, or he may say so and not do it, which makes him a pig. But despite that grim dilemma there are still idealists, chiefly professional Liberals, who argue that it is the duty of a gentleman to go into politics—that there is a way out of the quagmire in that direction. The remedy, it seems to me, is quite as absurd as all the other sure cures that Liberals advocate. When they argue for it, they simply argue, in words but little changed, that the remedy for prostitution is to fill the bawdyhouses with virgins. My impression is that this last device would accomplish very little: either the virgins would leap out of the windows, or they would cease to be virgins.

Kibbeh Palace, Cairo, Oct. 31, 1980, as quoted in Farah Pahlavi (2004) An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah, p. 433.
Speeches, 1980

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), pp. 154-155

Thomas v. Collins https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/323/516/, 323 U.S. 516 (1945) p. 323 U. S. 545

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism"
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

Prime Ministers&#x27; Questions (27 April 1989) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1989/apr/27/engagements#S6CV0151P0_19890427_HOC_126 <br class="br">Third term as Prime Minister

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Individual Culture, pp. 274–275

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 338)

Proclamation – Humiliation and Prayer https://wallbuilders.com/proclamation-humiliation-prayer-1812-2/ (20 August 1812)

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/AOC (2 March 2019) <br class="br">Twitter Quotes (2019), March 2019

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/AOC (2 March 2019) <br class="br">Twitter Quotes (2019), March 2019

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 117

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&amp;vol=000&amp;invol=02-102 (26 June 2003).

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002) (Opinion of the Court).

The heart of that opinion consisted in the assertion that Negroes were so far inferior that they had no rights which white men were bound to respect. This meant that as far as the Constitution was concerned, the distance between whites and blacks was no less than the distance between whites and any other inferior species. A white man had the same right to rule a Negro as he had to rule dog or a horse. Hence according to Taney blacks were not and could not have been included in the proposition "that all men are created equal." Whether or not they were intended to be so included was among the questions most fiercely debated by Lincoln and Douglas.
2000s, The Logic of the Colorblind Constitution (2004)

M.H. Kania
Full Court Reference in Memory of The Late Justice M. Hidayatullah

We would not uphold an unconstitutional statute merely because the Government promised to use it responsibly. [...] The Government’s assurance that it will apply [a statutory provision] more restrictively than its language provides is pertinent only as an implicit acknowledgment of the potential constitutional problems with a more natural reading.
United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1577 (2010) (Opinion of the Court).

Floyd Abrams, Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment, (Viking Press, 2005), p. 71.

And it is addressed, in particular, to speech critical of the government.
New York Times (July 19, 2012)
2010s

The word "amendment" itself means, "We had another thought! We re-thought something!"
Be More Cynical (2000)

Autobiography (1873)

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Writing for the court, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969)

Arnold S. Trebach, Fatal Distraction: The War on Drugs in the Age of Islamic Terrorism, Bloomington, Indiana, Unlimited Publishing LLC (2006) p. 74

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (8 Jan 2020) <br class="br">Williamson&#x27;s quotes in social media

Of course not! Those who wrote our Constitution understood that these rights are not granted by the government, but rather by our Creator. Thus it was never a question as to when or under what conditions they could be suspended: the government had no authority to suspend them at all because it did not grant them in the first place.
2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

Responding to a question about first gay divorce (July 28, 2006) - https://www.c-span.org/video/?193638-1/godless-church-liberalism <br class="br">2006

K.R. Malkani, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. 525 ff.

Source: p.310

A New Constitution for a Real Republic https://nationalparty.ie/new-year-message-2020/ (July 27, 2018)

“The Wrong Response to Holtzman”, New York Times, Dec. 30, 1987

Chap. 3. Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

2015

John Grisham, The Last Juror: A Novel, p. 357 (Author's Note) (2004)
Source: [Grisham, John, 2004, The Last Juror, BCA, 357 (Author's Note), 0-385-51043-8]

As quoted in "Van Wagenen Fellowship Richard M. Bergland 1968 Oxford University," American Association of Neurological Surgeons (2004)

4 March 2018 https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/03/04/snl-trump-alec-baldwin-gun-control-orig-gs.cnn/video/playlists/snl-politics/

&quot;You Don&#x27;t Own Me&quot;/&quot;If I Know You&quot; (song) <br class="br">Gilbert O&#x27;Sullivan, &quot;You Don&#x27;t Own Me&quot;/&quot;If I Know You&quot; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5180atue8I (song combination on YouTube) <br class="br">Song lyrics

Source: H.H. LAUGHLIN: American Scientist. American Progressive. Nazi Collaborator.