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"The government would be able to go to court with respect to newspaper articles, broadcast pieces and the like that they thought were bad or harmful or even against the government and try to block them."
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"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good."

"There shall be no end to the government of God."

"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."

"The ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people! The finest government is the one which encourages its own people to criticize the government harshly."

"The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government."

"The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security."

"There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion."

"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination."

"Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles."

"There are no doubts that western governments are willfully inducing radiation sickness into segments of their city populations."
Explore more quotes by Floyd Abrams

"There are some circumstances in which the First Amendment interest comes up against another interest that is really important and in which we have to make a decision in a particular case as to which is more important."

"CBS fought very hard on this because it believed and believes that there's a principle at stake here. The principle is that Dan Rather doesn't work for the police, and that people that speak to Dan Rather understand that he's a journalist and not a police agent."

"No other country in the world gives protection like that, but it is not absolute protection. People sometimes meet that high burden and win libel suits, and in those cases I think they ought to win."

"I think that it is important for people to understand that whether a good-guy or a bad-guy wins a case is less important than what the law is that the case results in."

"It just seems to be a human trait to want to protect the speech of people with whom we agree. For the First Amendment, that is not good enough. So it is really important that we protect First Amendment rights of people no matter what side of the line they are on."

"I just had the sense that at least the books that I had read about law just didn't really have enough of that."

"I am really impressed by lawyers who write books and tell us that they never lost a case. Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases. But there are very difficult cases out there."

"It is not to benefit CBS, not to benefit its reporters. On this one, the entire basis of it is this is a way to get more information, more important information to the public. And that's why so many states recognize this."

"When I began we did not really have a lot of First Amendment law. It is really surprising to think of it this way, but a lot of the law - most of the law that relates to the First Amendment freedom of the press in America - is really within living memory."

"It has something to do with the facts and the law and who the judges are. So I think lawyers sometimes exaggerate their role in winning and losing. Lawyers do have a role, and a major role, but they're not the only players in this game."
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