Floyd Abrams Quotes

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Rights, People, Not Good Enough

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". "Your Turn - Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense" with Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. une 15, 2005.

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• So sometimes the facts are good and sometimes the facts are bad, the important thing from the point of view of a principle as broad and important as freedom of speech is that the courts articulate and set forth in a very protective way what those principles are.

  Floyd Abrams

  Views, Freedom Of Speech, Important

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". "Your Turn - Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense" with Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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• I think that the very fact that CBS fought and fought and fought in Texas, in New York.

  Floyd Abrams

  New York, Thinking, Texas

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• The government understands - every government, every administration, both parties, understands - that that power, they just don't have.

  Floyd Abrams

  Party, Government, Administration

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". WEBY 1330AM Northwest Florida’s Talk Radio program 'Your Turn — Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense' host Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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• I thought that one of the things that we were losing sight of is the basic reasons that we do protect free speech and freedom of the press and the essentiality and centrality in our lives of really giving broad protection to freedom of speech and freedom of the press in America. I thought I could do that by telling stories of some of the cases that established those principles on a real life on the ground basis.

  Floyd Abrams

  Real, Telling Stories, Principles

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". WEBY 1330AM Northwest Florida’s Talk Radio program 'Your Turn — Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense' host Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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• I really do think that if we had lost that case we would really live in a country that would be really quite different.

  Floyd Abrams

  Country, Thinking, Different

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". WEBY 1330AM Northwest Florida’s Talk Radio program 'Your Turn — Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense' host Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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• I really believe that a lawyer - no matter how good - if he or she is really worth their weight in salt, they will lose some cases because, after all, it is not really one of those secretive things that not everything is decided by who your lawyer is.

  Floyd Abrams

  Believe, Matter, Salt

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". "Your Turn — Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense", www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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• I can tell you, having been in court today in New York, that the requests for the video outtakes have been dropped.

  Floyd Abrams

  New York, Today, Video

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• It is within the last quarter century or thirty years. And a lot of that law has turned out to be very, very protective of the press and the public's right to know.

  Floyd Abrams

  Years, Law, Lasts

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". "Your Turn - Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense" with Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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• If the word gets out, if the perception exists that by speaking to a CBS journalist you are, therefore, inevitably, immediately speaking to the police, I don't think there's any doubt but that people won't talk. And, therefore, the public won't learn.

  Floyd Abrams

  Thinking, People, Police

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• I would say that the Pentagon Papers case of 1971 - in which the government tried to block the 'The New York Times' and 'The Washington Post' and other newspapers from publishing papers that they obtained from a secret study of how we got involved in the war in Vietnam - that is probably the most important case.

  Floyd Abrams

  New York, Block, War

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". "Your Turn - Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense" with Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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• I still owe a duty of loyalty to my clients and former clients, so I cannot specify which clients I did not especially find congenial, but the cause was the same.

  Floyd Abrams

  Loyalty, Causes, Clients

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". "Your Turn - Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense" with Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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

  Floyd Abrams

  Book, Law, Enough

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". Interview with Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Book, Writing, Had Enough

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". "Your Turn - Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense" with Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Block, Government, Trying

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". "Your Turn", www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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• That doesn't necessarily mean that the story isn't true, ... But what it does mean, then, is that at this moment we simply do not have enough evidence, in my view, for any conclusion to be reached - that the presidents have been lying to us for all these years and that what we've been told was just a pack of lies.

  Floyd Abrams

  Lying, Mean, Views

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• It's not like learning how to hit a curve ball in baseball.

  Floyd Abrams

  Baseball, Curves, Balls

  "First Amendment Attorney Floyd Abrams Talks with CFIF’s Corporate Counsel About Three Decades of Free Speech". Interview with Renee Giachino, www.cfif.org. June 15, 2005.

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