1113 – “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say. A free press benefits more than just those who read the paper.”

-Edward Snowden

1087 – “To the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.”

-James Madison, 4th President of the United States of America

994 – “Let us labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion.”

-Ulysses S Grant, 18th President of the United States of America

542 – “‘The sovereignty of the States’ is the language of the Confederacy, and not the language of the Constitution. The latter contains the emphatic words — This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

–Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States of America

493 – “Protests and marches eventually die down but that does not mean movements end. They carry on behind the scenes, trudging along to make steady and lasting change. I see the promise of more civically engaged young people doing just this. They are engaged to stand up—whether it is gun violence, immigration rights, or any other issue that will inspire them. But they are not sitting idly by.”

–Roger Brooks, President and CEO of Facing History and Ourselves.

340 – “Ultimate futility of such attempts to compel coherence is the lesson of every such effort from the Roman drive to stamp out Christianity as a disturber of its pagan unity, the Inquisition, as a means to religious and dynastic unity, the Siberian exiles as a means to Russian unity, down to the fast failing efforts of our present totalitarian enemies. Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”

–Robert H Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

310 – “And, precisely because it is our flag that is involved, one’s response to the flag-burner may exploit the uniquely persuasive power of the flag itself. We can imagine no more appropriate response to burning a flag than waving one’s own, no better way to counter a flag burner’s message than by saluting the flag that burns, no surer means of preserving the dignity even of the flag that burned than by — as one witness here did — according its remains a respectful burial. We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.”

–William J Brennan, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

233 – “Let it, then, be henceforth proclaimed to the world, that man’s conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God.”

-John Tyler, 10th President of the United States of America

232 – “Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.”

-William Lloyd Garrison [Attributed]

221 – “The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”

–George Orwell