Top 48 Quotes & Sayings by Anthony Kennedy

The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth.

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than they once were.

The case for freedom, the case for our constitutional principles the case for our heritage has to be made anew in each generation. The work of freedom is never done.

You have plaintiffs attorneys, you have defense attorneys. So there is no unified bar that will protect a particular judge who has made a courageous decision that's unpopular.

A commitment to the Constitution is not something that's genetic. It's not inherited. It's not automatic. It has to be taught. And each generation must learn about the Constitution and the values of constitutional institutions within the context of their own time, within the environment of their own time.

A judge sometimes must release a criminal. He doesn't like it, she doesn't like it, but the law requires it. And the context of an election in which you are "soft on crime" betrays a misunderstanding of the judicial process and a misunderstanding of the Constitution.

'1984,' one of the most important works ever written, helped us understand the Cold War. In '1984,' the dictatorship was always surveilling you. Now, young people want to be surveyed. They want people to know where they are at all times.

I do not think that we should select judges based on a particular philosophy as opposed to temperament, commitment to judicial neutrality and commitment to other more constant values as to which there is general consensus.

The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own time.

The fascination about being a judge is the same about the duty of being a judge, and that is to ask yourself, Why am I about to rule the way I am about to rule? You must always ask yourself that question.

Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.

Democracy is something that you must learn each generation. It has to be taught.

We hold that same sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry in all states.

Sometimes it is easy... to enhance your prestige by not exercising your responsibility, but that's not been the tradition of the court.

Asking questions is an essential part of police investigation. In the ordinary sense a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment.

We can't bypass our heritage. We can't bypass the knowledge of who we are. You don't take a DNA test to see if you believe in freedom. Freedom is taught, and teaching the Constitution - I won't go on too much.

If the case is close, 5-4, and let's say you are on the side that prevailed with the majority, there are not a lot of high-fives and back slaps. There is a moment of quiet, a moment of respect, maybe even sometimes awe in the process. We realize that one of us is going to have to write out a decision which teaches and gives reasons for what we do.

Civics isn't something where you learned - learn it for a couple weeks in high school; it is who we are. Americans defined themselves by their Constitution. That is what creates us. This is our heritage, and you must know our heritage.

No one questions the validity, the urgency, the essentiality of the Voting Rights Act.

Our system presumes that there are certain principles that are more important than the temper of the times. And you must have a judge who is detached, who is independent, who is fair, who is committed only to those principles and not public pressures of other sort. That's the meaning of neutrality.

In the political context fair means somebody that will vote for the unions or for the business. It can't mean that in the judicial context or we're in real trouble.

We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.

The Constitution needs allegiance and loyalty and renewal and understanding with each generation, or else it's not going to last.

The Constitution doesn't belong to a bunch of judges and lawyers. It belongs to you.

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.

The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.

A law imposing criminal penalties on protected speech is a stark example of speech suppression.

There's a time for debate and a time for consensus. There's a time for advocacy and time for first principles.

The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.

Family members have a personal stake in honoring and mourning their dead and objecting to unwarranted public exploitation that, by intruding upon their own grief, tends to degrade the rites and respect they seek to accord to the deceased person who was once their own.

It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.

The federal sentencing guidelines should be revised downward. By contrast to the guidelines, I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences. In too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise and unjust.

There are some forty thousand children in California, according to the red brief, that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don't you think?

There's substance to the point that sociological information is new. We have five years of information to weigh against 2,000 years of history or more.

Any time you burn a cross in Virginia, it's a crime?

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.

The court decided, based on its reading of our precedents, that the effects test of Lemon is violated whenever government action creates an identification of the state with a religion, or with religion in general, ...or when the effect of the governmental action is to endorse one religion over another, or to endorse religion in general.

The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.

The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.

When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

Some kinds of government regulation of private consensual homosexual behavior may face substantial constitutional challenge.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.

Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.