Top 729 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Judges - Page 6

I believe that an independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic.

Just to be seen strolling to or from a helicopter on the White House lawn, shouting an evasive answer to Sam Donaldson, must seem to the Reagans not quite satisfactory enough of a 7 PM presence, and this inane scene certainly galls the press.

The outstanding truths of life, the great and unquestioned phenomena of society, are not to be argued away as myths and vagaries when they do not fit within our little moulds. If necessary, we must remake the moulds.

Modern diplomats approach every problem with an open mouth.

The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.

I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth.

Limitation is not a matter of justice. It is a rule of public policy which has its origin in history and its justification in convenience.

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.

It is important for all of us to appreciate where we come from and how that history has really shaped us in ways that we might not understand.

The only way to create a foundational document that could stand the test of time was to build in enough flexibility that later generations would be able to adapt it to their own needs and uses.

In some of our subcultures, paper bags are often used to carry intimate personal belongings. And the sight of some of our less fortunate citizens carrying their belongings in brown paper bags is too familiar to permit such crass biases to diminish protection of privacy.

No other profession is subject to the public contempt and derision that sometimes befalls lawyers. the bitter fruit of public incomprehension of the law itself and its dynamics.

Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile, I caught hell for.

The American public got to see for themselves every day, all day, how this trial progressed. There's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works.

We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our property and our liberty and our property under the Constitution.

Even the lesser burdens of a criminal investigation - including preparing for questioning by criminal investigators - are time-consuming and distracting.

Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forger, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise.

The judge is forced for the most part to reach his audience through the medium of the press whose reporting of judicial decisions is all too often inaccurate and superficial.

He will always see the most beauty whose affections are the warmest and most exercised, whose imagination is the most powerful, and who has most accustomed himself to attend to the objects by which he is surrounded.

There are many things in life more worthwhile than money. One is to be brought up in this our England which is still the envy of less happy lands.

May it be long before the people of the United States shall cease to take a deep and pervading interest in the Fourth of July, as the birthday of our national life, or the event which then occurred shall be subordinated to any other of our national history.

The protection of our liberties does not ultimately depend on parliaments or even the courts. It depends on the love of the people for liberty.

But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here.

Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.

The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.

I shall be honored to go to jail. Under a dictatorship, the detention cell is a place of honor.

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.

A vile and overbearing temper becomes sometimes, in one long accustomed to the exercise of power, unendurable to those who are subject to its humors.

But elimination will only happen if all countries - nuclear and non-nuclear states - genuinely work towards this result. Nuclear states must abolish their arsenals, as was indicated by the unanimous opinion of the international Court of Justice, the highest international tribunal. The five nuclear states seem to expect others to refrain from obtaining bombs while at the same time maintaining their own caches of deadly weapons.

The judges of England have rarely been original thinkers or great jurists. Many have been craftsmen rather than creators.

The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.

I know the law... I am it's greatest transgressor.

Justice Scalia was a lion of the law. Agree or disagree with him, all of his colleagues on the bench shared his wisdom and his humor. And like them, I miss him.

Our knowledge and all of our ideas are mutually connected; the more complicated they are, the more numerous must be the roads that lead to them and depart from them.

The need for self-defense naturally exists outside and inside the home, I would hold the 2nd Amendment applies outside the home.

The question before us is, whether people of African ancestry compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest of violence.

The Constitution is the origin and measure of legislative authority. It says to legislators, thus far ye shall go and no farther. Not a particle of it should be shaken; not a pebble of it should be removed.

They don't want to be reminded that there is an authority higher than the authority of the state.

When I got my law degree and my license to practice here in the District of Columbia, I represented several immigrants who had entered without inspection.

I totally reject and have rejected throughout my entire career the proposition that the end justifies the means or that a judge should decide cases based on a desire to reach a certain outcome.

The scratches in Yoko Ono records are moments of relief.

The paramount destiny and mission of woman is to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. That is the law of the Creator.

In order for the State in the person of school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.

Civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman.

I have always thought that term limits for Justices sound good until you really give the issue some thought.

Actually, I never thought of me being president of Brazil. First of all, I'm not a politician. I never have been, and I think I'm a very unlikely person for this kind of job because of my frankness. I've never dealt with political parties. I have no connections with political parties. So, I don't think so.

The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.

More students have a better knowledge of pop culture than of the Constitution.

Nullification is not a 'defense' recognized by law, but rather a mechanism that permits a jury, as community conscience, to disregard the strict requirements of law where it finds that those requirements cannot justly be applied in a particular case.

I loathe people who are disingenuous or inauthentic.

Every legislative limitation upon utterance, however valid, may in a particular case serve as an inroad upon the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects.

I have heard Shree Rajneesh and have been inspired by his talks. His works are sublimne and seek to liberate the soul of humans. Indeed his presentation is unique, his goal is great and his success in liberating each person from the mafia surrounding the soul is rewarding reading. The message that he had to deliver must reach everywhere. Ultimately salvation comes when one attains freedom from oneself. That, I believe, is the consummation which exposure to Osho may help.

As marriage and the family institution constitute the foundation and chief cornerstone of civil society, it is of the greatest moment that the marriage-tie should never be dissolved save for the most urgent reason. I cannot assent, however, to the doctrine that it should never be dissolved at all.

The phonograph and kinetoscope may some day seize and perpetuate all save the magnetic touch, but that weird, illusive, indefinable yet wonderfully real power by which the orator subdues may never be caught by science or preserved for the cruel dissecting knife of the critic.

The government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action, and its laws, when made in pursuance of the constitution, form the supreme law of the land.

The intelligence community was absolutely uniform and uniformly wrong about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq).

The risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence.

I volunteered at Ayuda, in the office, on a regular basis, and I did everything from fingerprinting and interviewing persons of Hispanic origin who entered the country without inspection and who were seeking work-authorization permits.

Needless, heedless, wanton and deliberate injury of the sort inflicted by Life's picture story is not an essential instrument of responsible journalism.