State will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold—by voice, by posted card, by letter or by press. Reason never has failed men. Only force and oppression have made the wrecks in the world.-William Allen White (1922). The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary to keep the waters pure.-Thomas Jefferson (1823). The greatest truths are often the most unpopular and exasperating; and were they to be denied discussion till the many should be ready to accept them, they would never establish themselves in the general mind. The progress of society depends on nothing more than on the promulgation of principles, which are in advance of public sentiment and practice, and which are consequently at war with the habits, prejudices, and immediate interests of large classes of the community. The defenders of freedom are not those who claim and exercise rights which no one assails, or who win shouts of applause by well turned compliments to liberty in the days of her triumph. They are those who stand up for rights which mobs, conspiracies, or single tyrants put in jeopardy; who contend for liberty in that particular form, which is threatened at the moment by the many or the few.-William E. Channing. Government is the creature of the people, and that which they have created they surely have a right to examine. The great Author of nature, having placed the right of dominion in no particular hands, hath left every point relating to it to be settled by the consent and approbation of mankind. In spite of the attempts of sophistry to conceal the origin of political right, it must inevitably rest at length on the acquiescence of the people.-Robert Hall (1825). The struggle for freedom of speech has marched hand in hand in the advance of civilization with the struggle for other great human liberties. History teaches that human liberty cannot be secured unless there is freedom to express grierances.-Floyd E. Thompson (1923). The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties...-Thomas Jefferson (1808). Liberty of speech is justified on three grounds: First, if the opinion be true, the world reaps a benefit to be derived from the truth; secondly, if the opinion be false, truth is the more strengthened by contest with it, and lastly, if it be partly true and partly false, our opinions, if they do not entirely lose their weakness, at any rate gain the corrections which have greatly improved them.—John P. Poole (1862). The Declaration of Independence declares liberty to be a right given to us by God. There can be no liberty without freedom of speech and the right of assembly to petition the government.-Alfred E. Smith (1940). It is more dangerous to shut people's mouths than to stop the waters of a river. To stop the progress of a river means to force it to expand and thus do more harm than if it had been allowed to take its natural course. Such is the case with people. If you want to prevent the damage threatening from the inundation of a river, you have to lead it into a proper bed which will hold all of its waters; if you want to make an impression on the people, let them have perfect liberty of speech.-A Chinese philosopher (2000 B. C.). Once again, people realize that without personal liberty and the right of selfexpression, life itself is hardly worth the living. James A. Farley (1940). We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. . . . Americans have a genuine passion for liberty and a genuine passion for justice.—Wendell L. Willkie (1940). Every national emergency puts a strain upon the democratic process. At the heart of that process is the principle of free speech and free political action.— Paul V. McNutt (1939). All our Presidents since the foundation of the republic have repeated their faith in the right thinking of the people. That is what our theory of government is based on. If at this moment people need a deeper consciousness of their heritage of freedom and their own responsibilities, why not let them get it through the old tried and true American processes of education and discussion among themselves? To my mind, they must grow into it rather than be pushed in— lest they might balk.—Anton Lang (1940). Political liberty implies liberty to express one's political opinion orally and in writing, and a tolerant respect for any and every individual opinion.Albert Einstein (1933). Freedom of Conscience A church is "a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the public worshipping of God in such a manner as they judge acceptable to him and effectual to the salvation of their souls." It is voluntary, because no man is by nature bound to any church. The hope of salvation is the cause of his entering into it. If he finds anything wrong in it, he should be as free to go out as he was to come in.-Thomas Jefferson (1776). The right of every citizen to worship as he pleases and to aspire to hold any office within the gift of the people must be preserved and maintained inviolate.Alvin Tufts Fuller (1928). I could never discriminate against a man because he embraced the religion that came to him with his mother's milk.-Theodore Roosevelt (1893). In this country I have no fear that liberty will be destroyed, that tryanny can ever take the place of democracy, that intolerance will again assume power. The pioneer spirit of liberty still lives here, the traditional policy of civil and religious liberty still animates our people. We are a nation born of a great ideal and as long as the nation survives, that ideal must and will be cherished and preserved. Other nations may reject that ideal and temporarily turn back to the darkness of the Middle Ages. All the more need that we hold the torch of liberty aloft so that others may see its light. Dark though these days are in some countries of the old and new worlds, yet everywhere there are men who still find light in religion; and tyranny is forced to recognize that men of sincere religion are its most dangerous foes.— Herbert H. Lehman (1935). The whole freedom of man consists either in spiritual or civil liberty. As for spiritual, who can be at rest, who can enjoy anything in this world with contentment, who hath not liberty to serve God, and to save his soul, according to the best light which God hath planted in him to that purpose, by the reading of His revealed will, and the guidance of His Holy Spirit? John Milton (1670). Long ago George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights voiced what has become one of the deepest convictions of the American people; "Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience." In the conflict of policies and of political systems which the world today witnesses, the United States has held forth for its own guidance and for the guidance of other nations, if they will accept it, this great torch of liberty of human thought, liberty of human conscience. We will never lower it. We will never permit, if we can help it, the light to grow dim. Rather through every means legitimately within our power and our office we will seek to increase that light that its rays may extend the further; that its glory may be seen even from afar.-Franklin D. Roosevelt (1935). The forcing of a man to support this or that teacher even of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind.-Thomas Jefferson (1779). When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.-Benjamin Franklin (1783). I would not persecute even the Atheist. I think he has a right to toleration and, for my own part, I pity him, for he wants the consolation which I enjoy. Religion should teach us the most refined humanity, and all her ways should be peace. The bigot is seldom the virtuous, the meek, the amiable, or the learned character.-John Wilkes (1796). All religions must be tolerated. In this country every man must get to heaven in his own way.-Frederick the Great (1740). Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be deprecated.-George Washington (1789). Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.-James Madison (1776). Do nothing to others which you would not have them do to you. Now I cannot see how, on his principle, one man is authorized to say to another, "Believe what I believe, and what you cannot, or you shall be put to death."Francois Voltaire (1765). Bigotry has no head and cannot think, no heart and cannot feel. When she moves it is in wrath; when she pauses it is amid ruin. Her prayers are curses, her God is a demon, her communion is death, her vengeance is eternity, her decalogue written in the blood of her victims, and if she stops for a moment in her infernal flight it is upon a kindred rock to whet her vulture fang for a more sanguinary desolation.—Daniel O'Connell. The proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust or emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injudiciously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right.-Thomas Jefferson (1779). Who can be at rest, who can enjoy anything in this world with contentment, who hath not liberty to serve God and to save his own soul according to the best light which God hath planted in him to that purpose?-John Milton (1649). Justice Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treason, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected.-Thomas Jefferson (1788). I am for the prisoners at the bar; and shall apologize for it only in the words of the Marquis Beccaria: "If I can but be the instrument of preserving one life, his blessing and tears of transport shall be a sufficient consolation to me for the contempt of mankind." Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. Nor is the law less stable than the fact. The law, in all vicissitudes of government, fluctuations of the passions, or flights of enthusiasm, will preserve a steady undeviating course. It will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations, and wanton tempers of men. Το use the words of a great and worthy man, a patriot and a hero, an enlightened friend of mankind, and a martyr to liberty, I mean Algernon Sidney, who, from his earliest infancy, sought a tranquil retirement under the shadow of the tree of liberty with his tongue, his pen, and his sword: "The law no passion can disturb. 'Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger. 'Tis mens sine affectu, written reason, retaining some measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but without any regard to persons, commends that which is good, and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low. 'Tis deaf, inexorable, inflexible. On the one hand, it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoner; on the other, it is deaf, deaf as an adder, to the clamors of the populace.”— John Adams (1770). 304755°-41- -3 The people are not qualified to judge questions of law; but they are very capable of judging questions of fact. In the form of juries, therefore, they determine all matters of fact, leaving to the permanent judges to decide the law resulting from those facts. It is left to the juries, if they think permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.-Thomas Jefferson (1789). No man should scruple or hesitate a moment to use arms in defense of so valuable a blessing as this liberty of trial by jury which we have received from our ancestors.-George Washington (1774). The judgment of jurors is the guaranty of individual liberty in England, and in every other country in the world where men aspire to freedom.-Emanuel Joseph Sieyès. An officer who is entrusted by the law with the sacred duty of naming judges of life and death for his fellow citizens, and who selects them exclusively from among his political and party friends, ought never to have in his power a second abuse of that tremendous magnitude.-Thomas Jefferson (1801). The rack and torture chamber may not be substituted for the witness stand. The State may not permit an accused to be hurried to conviction under mob domination where the whole proceeding is but a mask without supplying corrective process. The State may not deny to the accused the aid of counsel. Nor may a State, through the action of its officers, contrive a conviction through the pretense of a trial which in truth is "but used as a means of depriving a defendant of liberty through a deliberate deception of court and jury by the presentation of testimony known to be perjured." And the trial equally is a mere pretense where the state authorities have contrived a conviction resting solely upon confessions obtained by violence.-Charles E. Hughes (1936). Tyrannical governments have immemorially utilized dictatorial criminal procedure and punishment to make scapegoats of the weak or of helpless political, religious or racial minorities and those who differed, who would not conform and who resisted tyranny. Today, as in ages past, we are not without tragic proof that the exalted powers of some governments to punish manufactured crime dictatorially is the handmaid of tyranny.-Hugo L. Black (1940). I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.-Thomas Jefferson (1789). He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done, To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun, With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives to us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just |