Top 35 Quotes & Sayings by Warren E. Burger

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American celebrity Warren E. Burger.

Last updated on December 20, 2024.

Warren Earl Burger was an American lawyer and jurist who served as the 15th chief justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Burger graduated from the St. Paul College of Law in 1931. He helped secure the Minnesota delegation's support for Dwight D. Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican National Convention. After Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election, he appointed Burger to the position of Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division. In 1956, Eisenhower appointed Burger to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Burger served on this court until 1969 and became known as a critic of the Warren Court.

American - Celebrity | September 17, 1907 - June 25, 1995

Source: Wikipedia

There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.

Warren E. Burger

Trials by the adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood.

Warren E. Burger

It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house.

Warren E. Burger

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

Warren E. Burger

A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.

Warren E. Burger

Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values.

Warren E. Burger

It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to 'discover' a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.

Warren E. Burger

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Warren E. Burger

We may have lured judges into roaming at large in the constitutional field.

Warren E. Burger

Judges rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times.

Warren E. Burger

Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.

Warren E. Burger

However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises.

Warren E. Burger

To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.

Warren E. Burger

We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians.

Warren E. Burger

The trial of a case is a three-legged stool - a judge and two advocates.

Warren E. Burger

There can be no assumption that today's majority is 'right' and the Amish and others like them are 'wrong.' A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.

Warren E. Burger

For better or worse, editing is what editors are for; and editing is selection and choice of material. That editors newspaper or broadcast can and do abuse this power is beyond doubt, but that is no reason to deny the discretion Congress provided.

Warren E. Burger

There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.

Warren E. Burger

The president's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts.

Warren E. Burger

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet...to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

Warren E. Burger

The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state; it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.

Warren E. Burger

Guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant in the criminal trials as we flounder in a morass of artificial rules poorly conceived and often impossible [to apply].

Warren E. Burger

The notion that most people want black-robed judges, well-dressed lawyers and fine-paneled courtrooms as the setting to resolve their disputes is not correct. People with problems, like people with pains, want relief, and they want it as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

Warren E. Burger

[I]n constitutional adjudication some steps, which when taken were thought to approach 'the verge,' have become the platform for yet further steps. A certain momentum develops in constitutional theory and it can be a 'downhill thrust' easily set in motion but difficult to retard or stop.

Warren E. Burger

The men who wrote the First Amendment religion clause did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that amendment... the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. It can hardly be thought that in the same week the members of the first Congress voted to appoint and pay a chaplain for each House and also voted to approve the draft of the First Amendment... (that) they intended to forbid what they had just declared acceptable.

Warren E. Burger

We may be well on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated.

Warren E. Burger

Doctors still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?

Warren E. Burger

The State may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.

Warren E. Burger

The right of every person "to be let alone" must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.

Warren E. Burger

There can be no assumption that today's majority is "right" and the Amish or others like them are "wrong." A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no right or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.

Warren E. Burger

History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.

Warren E. Burger

[No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.

Warren E. Burger

The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily lives of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week.

Warren E. Burger

It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to discover a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.

Warren E. Burger

There may be some incorrigible human beings who cannot be changed except by God's own mercy to that one person.

Warren E. Burger