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Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.

— Anthony Kennedy

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More quotes by Anthony Kennedy

The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times.

Dignitary wounds cannot always be healed with the stroke of a pen.

Only a weak society needs government protection or intervention before it pursues its resolve to preserve the truth. Truth needs neither handcuffs nor a badge for its vindication.

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.

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You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

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I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

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Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Anthony Kennedy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.