Freedom of speech in the United States is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and by many state constitutions and state and federal laws. The freedom is not absolute; the Supreme Court of the United States has recognized several categories of speech that are excluded from the freedom of speech, and it has recognized that governments may enact reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions on speech.
Criticism of the government and advocacy of unpopular ideas that people may find distasteful or against public policy are almost always permitted. There are exceptions to these general protections, including the Miller test for obscenity, child pornography laws, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. Within these limited areas, other limitations on free speech balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as rights for authors and inventors over their works and discoveries (copyright and patent), protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons (restrictions on fighting words), or the use of untruths to harm others (slander). Distinctions are often made between speech and other acts which may have symbolic significance.
Despite the exceptions, the legal protections of the First Amendment are some of the broadest of any industrialized nation, and remain a critical, and occasionally controversial, component of American jurisprudence.
Read more about Freedom Of Speech In The United States: First Amendment, Types of Speech Restrictions, Private Actors, Censorship, Internet Speech
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“The freedom to make a fortune on the Stock Exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech.”
—John Mortimer (b. 1923)
“It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)
“I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.”
—Bible: New Testament St. Paul, in Colossians, 4:6.
“I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1954)
“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)