Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The power to tax involves the power to destroy;...the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create.
Seldom has a battle, in which greater numbers were not engaged, been so important in its consequences as that of Cowpens.
The fantastic advances in the field of electronic communication constitute a greater danger to the privacy of the individual.
[No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.
Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.
I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.
The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.
The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will, and lives only by their will.
A constitution is framed for ages to come, and is designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it.
The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.
We must look at the institution of slavery as publicists, and not as casuists. It is a question of law, and not a case of conscience.
The State may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.
We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians.
To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.
The law does not expect a man to be prepared to defend every act of his life which may be suddenly and without notice alleged against him.
The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a damned word he says.
By doing good with his money, a man, as it were, stamps the image of God upon it, and makes it pass current for the merchandise of heaven.
In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.
When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights.
Before this distinguished assembly and the world, the bells today proclaim the joyous tidings of the completion of this quietly soaring tower.
In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.
The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior.
Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
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.
Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.
I hate banks. They do nothing positive for anybody except take care of themselves. They're first in with their fees and first out when there's trouble.
The only reason that there has been no sabotage or espionage on the part of Japanese-Americans is that they are waiting for the right moment to strike.
Have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress.
Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness to our society.
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.
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].
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.
To obtain a just compromise, concession must not only mutual-it must be equal also....There can be no hope that either will yield more than it gets in return.
The French Revolution will be found to have had great influence on the strength of parties, and on the subsequent political transactions of the United States.
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.
No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States and compounding the American people into one common mass.
A republic is not an easy form of government to live under, and when the responsibility of citizenship is evaded, democracy decays and authoritarianism takes over.
The events of my life are too unimportant, and have too little interest for any person not of my immediate family, to render them worth communicating or preserving.
The institution of Masonry ought to be abandoned as one capable of much evil, and incapable of producing any good which might not be affected by safe and open means.
I have nine children... and one of them is an invalid. Her mother is obliged to take her away in the winter, and when one bird is off the nest, the other has to go on.
I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses.
It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defence, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defence of our nation worthwhile.
You sit up there, and you see the whole gamut of human nature. Even if the case being argued involves only a little fellow and $50, it involves justice. That's what is important.
The federal government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it . . . is now universally admitted.
If Nixon is not forced to turn over tapes of his conversations with the ring of men who were conversing on their violations of the law, then liberty will soon be dead in this nation.
Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional.....All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.
Those who serve upon our juries have maintained a standard of fairness and excellence and demonstrated a vision toward the administration of justice that is a wellspring of inspiration.
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.