The Bill of Rights never gets off the page and into the lives of most Americans.

The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.

One's right to life, liberty, and property depends on the outcome of no election.

We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation.

The most drastic and usually the most effective remedy for fear is direct action.

The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market.

There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.

There are many things which we can afford to forget which it is yet well to learn.

Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.

By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion... .

Customary greeting to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, What's shaking, chiefy baby?

The repetition of a catchword can hold analysis in fetters for fifty years or more.

The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.

Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.

Suppose you had a cross burning in a play or a movie... Would that be intimidating?

A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly.

Pretty much all law consists in forbidding men to do something that they want to do.

Blood is a destiny. One's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry.

When the righteous rule, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.

Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.

It should therefore be difficult in a republic to declare war; but not to make peace.

The difference between gossip and philosophy lies only in one's way of taking a fact.

We are not final because we are infallible, but infallible only because we are final.

I'm the world's original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.

The "wall of separation between church and State" is a metaphor based on bad history.

I am not a pessimist, but I am not an optimist about the future of American democracy.

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society.

The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title of citizen.

If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you.

The history of what the law has been is necessary to the knowledge of what the law is.

Most of us retain enough of the theological attitude to think that we are little gods.

The power I exert on the court depends on the power of my arguments, not on my gender.

Our upside down welfare state is socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.

Equal Justice Under The Law. That is a great goal. But that goal has not been realized.

It is much easier to modify an opinion if one has not already persuasively declared it.

It is impossible, maybe undesirable, to take partisanship out of the political process.

The day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body.

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

A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion.

All I can say is I did the best I could, and I didn't do well enough on many occasions.

Success. Is not the position where you are standing, but which direction you are going.

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

Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.

Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.

History is not life, but since only life makes history, the union of the two is obvious.

The mark of a civilized man is his willingness to re-examine his most cherished beliefs.

Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values.

The Ku Klux Klan never dies. They just stop wearing sheets because sheets cost too much.

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