War & Peace Quote by Floyd Abrams

Abrams frames a corporate legal battle as civic muscle memory: the principle endures, the fight repeats, the institution proves itself by returning to the ring. That opening move - "The principle though remains the same" - does quiet rhetorical work. It sandblasts away the messy particulars of whatever case or controversy he’s recalling and elevates the dispute into a clean, reusable moral. In a media environment where motives are routinely treated as suspect, Abrams supplies a motive that sounds almost antique: principle for its own sake.

The repetition of "hard, very hard" is lawyerly emphasis dressed up as plain speech. It signals more than intensity; it’s a preemptive rebuttal to the cynical take that networks defend press freedom only when it flatters their bottom line. Abrams wants the audience to picture CBS not as a profit engine but as a constitutional actor, one that earns legitimacy through costly resistance. The subtext is transactional in a different currency: credibility. If CBS can be seen as a defender of free expression and editorial independence, it buys trust from journalists, viewers, and courts alike.

"Will fight again" turns history into commitment, almost a brand promise. It’s also a warning shot to future plaintiffs and regulators: expect a well-funded, ideologically confident defense. Coming from Abrams - the dean of First Amendment litigation - the sentence doubles as a résumé line and a rallying cry, aligning corporate power with the public good while carefully leaving off the inconvenient footnote: institutions don’t fight for principles in the abstract; they fight when principle and interest can be made to rhyme.