Top 729 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Judges - Page 9

It's fascinating that people, there's so many people now who will make judgments based on what you look like. I'm black. So I'm supposed to think a certain way. I'm supposed to have certain opinions. I don't do that. You don't create a box and put people in and then make a lot of generalizations about them.

If children do not understand the Constitution, they cannot understand how our government functions, or what their rights and responsibilities are as citizens of the United States.

I do not enjoy being away from Richmond, my friends of a lifetime, and my home... I do not enjoy working 6 days a week and almost every night at a time when I had planned to be tapering off. There are compensations which appeal to any lawyer who is proud of his profession. The Supreme Court is an awesome place.

I knew better, even as a child, than to even attempt to compete with Donald.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

A nation may be born in a day, but the great truths which make for the glory and uplift of the race only through long ages permeate and control humanity. We must have the divine patience and understand the divine mathematics of a thousand years as one day.

We knew what we were up against, but we were going to go down fighting. Hopefully people back home remember that we got this far. We've got nothing to be ashamed about.

Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.

The Internet is a far more speech-enhancing medium than print, the village green, or the mails. Because it would necessarily affect the Internet itself, the C.D.A. would necessarily reduce the speech available for adults on the medium. This is a constitutionally intolerable result.

Each of you, as an individual, must pick your own goals. Listen to others, but do not become a blind follower.

With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them - with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the 'reasoned judgment' of a bare majority of this Court - we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.

I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not breakdown from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.

Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader, who - thanks largely to the media - has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans.

I remain mindful that the role of a judge is a limited one and that judges can't solve every problem. But at the same time, judges play a crucial role in safeguarding liberty and protecting the rights of all citizens.

History provides an antidote to cynicism about the past.

Empirical evidence collected and analyzed by political scientists demonstrates that judicial pensions are the most important factor in a Justice's decision to retire, far more important than the party of the President or which political party has control of the Senate.

Media corporations have a civic responsibility not only to prevent fraud and financial abuse, but also to not corrupt or degrade our culture.

The quest for freedom, dignity, and the rights of man will never end.

I say to the women out there, remember how difficult it was for women like Justice O'Connor starting out. Even though she graduated with top grades, she had to take a job as a legal secretary. Remember how far we have come.

I don't even know what the odds are for one kid or one team to make it here. Obviously, being from Canada this is their Stanley Cup - they made it. It's hard enough to get here and it's hard enough to advance.

They tell you in Washington that if you want a friend, get a dog. That is not true. Get a family. This is a hard place to be.

Laws fixed, certain, and uniform, are said to be the distinguishing traits of civilized from savage communities. In these last, seldom are any laws, unless it be the arbitrary and uncertain will of the strongest.

Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase.

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects... that is was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject.

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.

But if, on the other hand, we should be justified in rejecting it, if there testified on oath, then, supposing our rules of evidence to be sound, we may be excused if we hesitate elsewhere to give it credence.

You can, if you wish, think of it like the universe: Each case is a sun, and all the judges, lawyers and administrative personnel represent planets revolving around the case in fixed orbit, never getting closer.

I do not believe there are any circumstances in which a judge should consider his or her own values or policy preferences in determining what the law means.

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.

Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics.

In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.

You turn inward. There's nothing to distract you, so you begin to look at yourself.

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

You have been tried by twelve good men and true, not of your peers but as high above you as heaven is of hell, and they have said you are guilty.

A grand jury would 'indict a ham sandwich,' if that's what you wanted.

In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character.

I have had to make a decision I may not agree with, but I am required to follow the letter of the law. It is not my job to think what is best... My responsibility is to decide what the law says and to decide to the law.

In order that punishment should not be an act of violence perpetrated by one or many upon a private citizen, it is essential that it should be public, speedy, necessary, the minimum possible in the given circumstances, proportionate to the crime, and determined by the law.

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

There would be nights when I would wake up and couldn't get back to sleep. So I would go downstairs and write. The staff had a pool going on how many pages of typing I would bring in here in the morning.

Owing to the fact that leaders in the women's groups made a point of serving on the jury here whenever they were called, we have always had an unusually high type of women represented on the jury.

Every intelligent person whose life has been passed in a slaveholding State, and who has carefully observed the character and capacity of the African race, will see that a general and sudden emancipation would be absolute ruin to the Negroes, as well as to the white population.

The object of punishment is to... lift the man up; to stamp out his bad nature and wicked disposition.

The lawgiver ought to be gentle, lenient and humane. The lawgiver ought to be a skilled architect who raises his building on the foundation of self-love, and the interest of all ought to be the product of the interests of each.

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.

I think that Congress' ability to reason is fully equal to that of the judiciary.

Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions.

The laws will not be silent in time of war but they'll speak with a somewhat different voice.

I think there is no greater job anybody can have than having been a prosecutor.

I am the result of a loving upbringing in a peaceful country, with wonderful parents and siblings, a very long-term relationship, stability, support - but a feeling that life isn't always just and that there is injustice for people and we should do something about it.

In parenting, as in judging, the days are long, but the years are short.

It was not by accident or coincidence that the rights to freedom in speech and press were coupled in a single guaranty with the rights of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition for redress of grievances. All these, though not identical, are inseparable. They are cognate rights, and therefore are united in the First Article's assurance.

Without continuity, men would become like flies in summer.

The police must obey the law while enforcing the law.

It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must, in practice, be a bad government.

The Supreme Court's only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society.

Nothing can be clearer than that what the Constitution intended to guard against was the exercise by the general government of the power of directly taxing persons and property within any State through a majority made up from the other States.

By our form of Government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed on the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.