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Again, it is a new doctrine of constitutional law that one indicted for disobedience to an unconstitutional statute may not defend on the ground of the invalidity of the statute, but must obey it though he knows it is no law, and, after he has suffered the disgrace of conviction and lost his liberty by sentence, then, and not before, seek, from within prison walls, to test the validity of the law.

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More quotes by Hugo Black

An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.

The layman's Constitutional view is that what he likes is Constitutional and that which he doesn't like is un-Constitutional. That about measures up the Constitutional acumen of the average person.

Citizenship is no light trifle to be jeopardized any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of one of its general or implied grants of power.

The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hugo Black (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.