Amendment Quotes - page 16
![I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it. ... Joe [Biden] and I brought an amendment to the $87 billion, and we said, `This should be paid for now, not adding to the deficit'.... The president said no; the Republicans voted no. (John Kerry)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/16/john-kerry-amendment-billion-1009216.webp)
This concept of "national defense" cannot be deemed an end in itself, justifying any exercise of legislative power designed to promote such a goal. Implicit in the term "national defense" is the notion of defending those values and ideals which set this Nation apart. For almost two centuries, our country has taken singular pride in the democratic ideals enshrined in its Constitution, and the most cherished of those ideals have found expression in the First Amendment. It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties - the freedom of association - which make the defense of our nation worthwhile.
Earl Warren
At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty – and thus a good unto itself – but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions. The First Amendment recognizes no such thing as a "false" idea.
William Rehnquist
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.
Ulysses S. Grant
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.
Ulysses S. Grant
And the press freedom fear here is that the prosecution of Assange, and even the indictment itself, will deter journalism that is important and necessary and that should be regarded as protected by the First Amendment. And I think that this ruling is, again, a victory for Assange, but insofar as it's an endorsement of the U.S.'s prosecution theory and of the underlying indictment, I think that that indictment is going to continue to cast a kind of shadow over investigative journalism.
Julian Assange
A great deal has been written about that hostility at Waterloo, as though a country that refuses to pass something as simple as the Equal Rights Amendment would not have pockets of vicious misogyny, as though a nation with tens of thousands of nuclear bombs, Army bases, weapons factories in the midst of unemployment would not be able to raise a furious patriarchal horde.
Grace Paley
We built your country and this civilization has turned us so backward mentally that you let us go under the Emancipation Proclamation, passed the 13th Amendment against involuntary slavery knowing that {because of} the mental condition that our people were in, we would become your volunteer servants. And so we have served America, fought in all her wars, bled and died on every field of battle. We helped you beat Germany, and now Germany is reunited and we can't get together. The walls are tumbling down between Eastern Europeans, but no walls are tumbling down with us because there are those who don't want to see us reconcile our differences.
Louis Farrakhan
In his concurring judgment in Golaknath v. State of Punjab (AIR 1967 SC 1643), he held that fundamental rights are outside the amendatory process, if the amendment seeks to abridge or take away any of the rights, and that for abridging or taking away fundamental rights, a constituent body will have to be convoked.
Mohammad Hidayatullah
I am a Jew, and I am a Rabbi, and I cherish - as do my people - the grandeur of the First Amendment. That amendment prevents, and properly so, the government from investigating the beliefs of any group that calls itself religious; but it does not prevent the government from investigating the activities of any group, whatever its name might be.
No man and no group in this country is above the law. Indeed, for 1000 years and more my people have lived with the Hebrew phrase, "נא דמלכותא דינא ." [Dina d'malkhuta dina] - "The law of the land is the law."
Unless that law is upheld and enforced, we all of us are victims and we Jews know this very well.
Maurice Davis
