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Quotes by Judge
"Carve every word before you let it fall."
19
"Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or want of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragic character."
19
"Independence doesn't mean you decide the way you want."
18
"The basic premise of the Constitution was a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances because man was perceived as a fallen creature and would always yearn for more power."
18
"It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself."
18
"Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so."
18
"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."
18
"I'm a judge. It seemed to me that it was critical to try to take action to stem the criticism and help people understand that in the constitutional framework, it's terribly important not to have a system of retaliation against decisions people don't like."
18
"Beware how you take away hope from any human being."
18
"Lawsuit abuse is a major contributor to the increased costs of healthcare, goods and services to consumers."
18
"Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution."
18
"In less than eighteen months, it prepared a first draft which it submitted to the General Assembly and which, at the end of one hundred sessions of elevated, often impassioned discussion, was adopted in the form of thirty articles on December 10, 1948."
18
"There is no requirement that police stop a person who enters a police station and states that he wishes to confess a crime or a person who calls the police to offer a confession because volunteered statements of any kind are not barred by the 5th Amendment."
18
"War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals."
18
"Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances."
18
"The concept of neutrality can lead to a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it."
17
"The attorney general would call at 5 o'clock in the evening and say: 'Tomorrow morning we are going to try to integrate the University of Mississippi. Get us a memo on what we're likely to do, and what we can do if the governor sends the National Guard there.'"
17
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
17
"It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it's the law."
17
"Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?"
17
"Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest."
17
"Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attempt to surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, though the precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course, foreseen."
17
"While democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty."
17
"Even as someone who's labeled a conservative - I'm a Republican I'm black, I'm heading up this organization in the Reagan administration - I can say that conservatives don't exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they're welcome."
17
"Before this distinguished assembly and the world, the bells today proclaim the joyous tidings of the completion of this quietly soaring tower."
17
"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."
17
"The right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitution's protection of privacy."
17
"And in that confirmation process, I sat for 17 hours in front of a senate judiciary committee."
17
"My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent."
17
"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions."
17
"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself."
17
"The real problem today is the ineffective and inconsistent oversight of professional boxing, which has led to continuing scandals, controversies, unethical practices, and unnecessary injuries and deaths in the sport."
17
"You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations... until they were all litigated out."
17
"It lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it."
17
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