Judge Quotes: Wisdom and Insights from the Bench (Page 2)

"Shakespeare's idea of the tragic fact is larger than this idea and goes beyond it; but it includes it, and it is worth while to observe the identity of the two in a certain point which is often ignored"

Andrew Coyle Bradley, Judge

"People have to be educated and they have to stick to it. If people lose that respect, an awful lot is lost"

Stephen Breyer, Judge

"I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences"

Sonia Sotomayor, Judge

"The censor's sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression"

Earl Warren, Judge

"The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism"

Earl Warren, Judge

"To get what you want, STOP doing what isn't working"

Earl Warren, Judge

"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"

Earl Warren, Judge

"Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile, I caught hell for"

Earl Warren, Judge

"No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God"

William Blackstone, Judge

"Men was formed for society, and is neither capable of living alone, nor has the courage to do it"

William Blackstone, Judge

"It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer"

William Blackstone, Judge

"Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy"

Louis D. Brandeis, Judge

"The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities"

Louis D. Brandeis, Judge

"The most important political office is that of the private citizen"

Louis D. Brandeis, Judge

"Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done"

Louis D. Brandeis, Judge

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding"

Louis D. Brandeis, Judge

"To force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him"

Potter Stewart, Judge

"Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution"

Learned Hand, Judge

"The mid-day sun is too much for most eyes; one is dazzled even with its reflection. Be careful that too broad and high an aim does not paralyze your effort and clog your springs of action"

Learned Hand, Judge

"If we are to keep democracy, there must be a commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice"

Learned Hand, Judge

"Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers"

Learned Hand, Judge

"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture"

Learned Hand, Judge

"To some lawyers, all facts are created equal"

Felix Frankfurter, Judge

"Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today"

Felix Frankfurter, Judge

"All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them"

Felix Frankfurter, Judge

"Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process"

Thurgood Marshall, Judge

"Surely the fact that a uniformed police officer is wearing his hair below his collar will make him no less identifiable as a policeman"

Thurgood Marshall, Judge

"I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. I expect to die at 110, shot by a jealous husband"

Thurgood Marshall, Judge

"The United States is the greatest law factory the world has ever known"

Charles Evans Hughes, Judge

"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots"

Thurgood Marshall, Judge

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