74 quotes
The office of the lawyer, however poorly filled, is too delicate, personal and confidential to be occupied by a corporation.
The physical power to get the money does not seem to me a test of the right to tax. Might does not make right even in taxation.
But the validity of a doctrine does not depend on whose ox it gores.
We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.
The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either.
This Court is forever adding new stories to the temples of constitutional law, and the temples have a way of collapsing when one story too many is added.
If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.
As to ethics, the parties seem to me as much on a parity as the pot and the kettle. But want of knowledge or innocent intent is not ordinarily available to diminish patent protection.
The petitioner's problem is to avoid Scylla without being drawn into Charybdis.
No longer may the head of a state consider himself outside of the law, and impose inhuman acts on the peoples of the world.
New York Times Obituary (1954)
The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion — except for the sect that can win political power.
Zorach v. Clauson (1952)
Our protection against all kinds of fanatics and extremists, none of whom can be trusted with unlimited power over others, lies not in their forbearance but in the limitations of our Constitution.
Had the jury convicted on proper instructions it would be the end of the matter. But juries are not bound by what seems inescapable logic to judges.
And I have pointed out that men cannot enjoy their right to personal freedom if fanatical masses, whatever their mission, can strangle individual thoughts and invade personal privacy.
American Communications Association v. Douds (1950)
There is no such thing as an achieved liberty; like electricity, there can be no substantial storage and it must be generated as it is enjoyed, or the lights go out.
The Task of Maintaining Our Liberties: The Role of the Judiciary (1953)
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)
For a century every contest with the Supreme Court has ended in evading the basic inconsistency between popular government and judicial supremacy.
The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy: A Study in Crisis in American Power Politics (1941)
Our forefathers found the evils of free thinking more to be endured than the evils of inquest or suppression. This is because thoughtful, bold and independent minds are essential to wide and considered self-government.
I am entitled to say of that opinion what any discriminating reader must think of it — that it was as foggy as the statute the [[Attorney General was asked to interpret.
Lying has always been a highly approved Nazi technique. Hitler, in Mein Kampf, advocated mendacity as a policy.