The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.
Interpretation
The First Amendment's lessons about religious freedom remain critical today.
In this quote, Anthony Kennedy emphasizes the enduring significance of the First Amendment, highlighting that the protection of individual conscience and belief must be upheld by the state. He warns that state-sponsored religious practices undermine true freedom by encroaching on personal beliefs, a foundational principle that defines a free society.
In practice
In a lecture on constitutional rights, one might quote this to illustrate the importance of the First Amendment.
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.
Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.
For mines are for men, not for money. And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born.
If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.
ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.
Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
This formidable censor of the public functionaries [the press], by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.
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