With one terrible exception, the Civil War, law and the Constitution have kept America whole and free.
Freedom under law is hard work. If rulers cannot be trusted with arbitrary power, it is up to citizens to raise their voices at injustice.
That fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate;
But then great victories for civil liberty are frequently won in the cases of unappealing people.
Like religion, patriotism is a virtue so indispensable and exalted, its excesses pass with little censure. But when . . . it descends to fanaticism, it is of the reprehensible quality of the religion...
When we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution of the United States, we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not h...
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 inte...
At the time the First Amendment was adopted, as today, there were those unscrupulous enough and skillful enough to use the deliberate or reckless falsehood as an effective political tool. . . . That s...
But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of th...
I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and...
Men feared witches and burnt women.
There is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for t...