Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Our love cannot be measured, it just is.
Well, in my job, I avoid political commentary.
Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.
While money is used to finance speech, money is not speech.
It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.
To make a coverage decision, doesn't one have to make a medical judgment?
I play duplicate bridge and I play golf and I go swimming once in a while.
The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.
Public officials, including state legislators, have a duty to act impartially.
All I can say is I did the best I could, and I didn't do well enough on many occasions.
They may not be conscripted against their will as the foot soldiers in a federal crusade.
A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.
The level of discourse reaching a mailbox simply cannot be limited to that which would be suitable for a sandbox.
I think maybe the people in elected positions are more interested in preserving their jobs than in doing the best job possible.
But I wound like people to think I was an honest judge and a good judge. And I always tried the reach the best result in every case.
If you're interested in the job and in the kind of work that's done, you have to have an interest in who's going to fill your shoes.
There was a fear among the original framers that the federal government would be so strong that they might destroy the state militias.
I always prided myself on my ability to choose good clerks, and one of the key elements was whether I thought I would like the person.
The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.
Colonial history contains many examples of firearm regulations in urban areas that imposed obstacles to their use for protection of the home.
When the commission finds that a pig has entered the parlor, the exercise of its regulatory power does not depend on proof the pig is obscene.
The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society.
Although it may not be a castle, [it is the] functional equivalent of a hotel room, a vacation and retirement home or a hunting and fishing cabin.
I am not a fan of President Trump, I should say. I wouldn't try to comment on every particular issue in which we disagree, but there are plenty of them.
Requiring that an execution be relatively painless...actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.
I have been opposed to ceremonies at the White House. It gives the impression that the court is subordinate to the executive, which I think is quite wrong.
The graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference.
To show a well-founded fear of persecution, an alien need not prove that it is more likely than not that he or she will be persecuted in his or her home country.
To show a 'well-founded fear of persecution', an alien need not prove that it is more likely than not that he or she will be persecuted in his or her home country.
I announced my dissent in the Citizens United orally, and I stumbled in my announcement. I had a little difficulty expressing myself. And that was out of character.
When I signed on to letting the death penalty back in, I thought the procedural protections against executing an innocent person were stronger than they turned out to be.
It almost seems I was writing two separate books, the first one about the time before I went on the court and the second one about the many, many terms I was on the court.
Even in high school, a rule that permits only one point of view to be expressed is less likely to produce correct answers than the open discussion of countervailing views.
Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundation of our democracy.
For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation.
After all, a district judge who gives harsh sentences to Yankees fans and lenient sentences to Red Sox fans would not be acting reasonably even if her procedural rulings were impeccable.
Although NFL teams have common interests such as promoting the NFL brand, they are still separate, profit-making entities, and their interests in licensing team trademarks are not necessarily aligned
Although NFL teams have common interests such as promoting the NFL brand, they are still separate, profit-making entities, and their interests in licensing team trademarks are not necessarily aligned.
I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.
District of Columbia v. Heller, which recognized an individual right to possess a firearm under the Constitution, is unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision that the Supreme Court announced during my tenure on the bench.
I had been born a Republican. My dad was an active Republican, but he was not active in politics and I really never was either. It's true that I did belong to that party, but it really had very little impact on my public work or my private views.
Sam Alito replacing Justice O'Connor was a very significant change. He is much more conservative. And, as for John Roberts, he is much more in the direction of protecting the rights of very rich people to donate money to campaigns than Bill Rehnquist ever was.
During my years as a practicing lawyer, it just was part of your study of what Congress was trying to say in their statutes. I never really considered judges or scholars as either those who used legislative history or those who were opposed to it until after I got on the court.
One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.
Of course, when I joined the Navy and when I took up the correspondence course in cryptography, I had to sign an oath that I would never reveal what sort of work I was involved in. It was only some years after the war that Congress passed a statute relieving me of that obligation.
Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority.
"Respecting" means concerning or with reference to. But it also means with respect~ that is "reverence," "good-will," "regard" to. Taking into account this richer meaning, the Establishment Clause, in banning laws that concern religion, especially prohibits those that pay homage to religion.
When I joined the Supreme Court in 1975, both state and federal judges accepted the Court's unanimous decision in United States v. Miller as having established that the Second Amendment's protection of the right to bear arms was possessed only by members of the militia and applied only to weapons used by the militia.
Every individual who participated in the redistricting process knew that incumbency protection was a critical factor in producing the bizarre lines. ... Many of the oddest twists and turns of the Texas districts would never have been created if the Legislature had not been so intent on protecting party and incumbents.
In the national debate about a serious issue, it is the expression of the minority's viewpoint that most demands the protection of the First Amendment. Whatever the better policy may be, a full and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana is far wiser than suppression of speech because it is unpopular.