Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think I'm a pretty nice fella.
The wise do not investigate such silliness.
A good, hard-hitting dissent keeps you honest.
Why can't the state accede to the public's wishes?
A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.
A man who has made no enemies is probably not a very good man.
Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?
In the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American.
I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better.
Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.
This is so absurd that it has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated.
I try to be an honest originalist! I will take the bitter with the sweet!
A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement.
A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.
The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.
It's not up to the courts to invent new minorities that get special protections.
The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.
Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.
A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.
People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.
If you condemn someone who has committed a crime to be tortured, that would be unconstitutional.
Campaign promises are - by long democratic tradition - the least binding form of human commitment.
Some people are inherently likeable. If you're not - work on it. It may even improve your social life.
The principal purpose of stare decisis is to protect reliance interest and further stability in the law.
You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations... until they were all litigated out.
I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.
As a young man, you're dazzled by the power of the White House and all that. But power tends to corrupt.
It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one.
Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is "established by the State".
Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.
I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.
I'm a law-and-order guy. I mean, I confess I'm a social conservative, but it does not affect my views on cases.
What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?
I would not like to be replaced by someone who immediately sets about undoing what I've tried to do for 25-26 years.
The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.
If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?
Society's mores have changed, and what used to be thought not to be cruel and unusual now is thought to be cruel and unusual.
It's a long, uphill fight to get back to original orthodoxy. We have two 'originalists' on the Supreme Court. That's something.
When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?
One can be sophisticated and believe in God. Reason and intellect are not to be laid aside where matters of religion are concerned.
Originalism says that when you consult the text, you give it the meaning it had when it was adopted, not some later modern meaning.
This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?
If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king.
But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of our cities.
Being a good person begins with being a wise person. Then, when you follow your conscience, will you be headed in the right direction.
Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.
In a big family the first child is kind of like the first pancake. If it's not perfect, that's okay, there are a lot more coming along.
There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of America's death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society.
The court's job is to uphold the Constitution and you don't call that off in times of crisis. Would the framers have allowed this practice?