Quotes by Judges - Page 3

Severability is an important concept in the context of the relations between this Court and Parliament; like 'reading down', it is an instrument of judicial restraint which reduces the danger of producing an overbroad judicial reaction to overbroad legislation.
Albie Sachs
A state which savagely represses or persecutes sections of its people cannot in my view be regarded as observing the rule of law, even if the transport of the persecuted minority to the concentration camp or the compulsory exposure of female children on the mountainside is the subject of detailed laws duly enacted and scrupulously observed.
Tom Bingham
The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?
Bernhard Schlink
Perhaps I can't escape the image that others have created for me, but if I don't try, I will never know if I can or not.
Julian Houston
There is indeed something deeply wrong with a person who lacks principles, who has no moral core. There are, likewise, certainly values that brook no compromise, and I would count among them integrity, fairness, and the avoidance of cruelty. But I have never accepted the argument that principle is compromised by judging each situation on its own merits, with due appreciation of the idiosyncrasy of human motivation and fallibility.
Sonia Sotomayor
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of tho
Anthony M. Kennedy
If I am asked, What do you propose to substitute for universal suffrage? Practically, What have you to recommend? I answer at once, Nothing. The whole current of thought and feeling, the whole stream of human affairs, is setting with irresistible force in that direction. The old ways of living, many of which were just as bad in their time as any of our devices can be in ours, are breaking down all over Europe, and are floating this way and that like haycocks in a flood. Nor do I see why any wise man should expend much thought or trouble on trying to save their wrecks. The waters are out and no human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god.
James Fitzjames Stephen
What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.
Learned Hand
No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
Gideon J. (Gideon John) Tucker
A sudden and unforseen swinging of his head alarmed all present. He seemed to be trying to scare off a flock of vampires biting into his brain.
Juan Filloy
As I looked and looked, the living face became visible in the dead, the young in the old. This is what must happen to old married couples, I thought: the young man is preserved in the old one for her, the beauty and grace of the young woman stay fresh in the old one for him.
Bernhard Schlink
But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. Not only had I loved her, I had chosen her.
Bernhard Schlink
The tatters of old stories are tangled, weathered, muted by long-held silences that succeeded loud feuds, and sometimes no doubt re-dyed a more flattering color.
Sonia Sotomayor
There are doubtless those who would wish to lock up all those who suspected of terrorist and other serious offences and, in the time-honored phrase, throw away the key. But a suspect is by definition a person whom no offence has been proved. Suspicions, even if reasonably entertained, may prove to be misplaced, as a series of tragic miscarriages of justice has demonstrated. Police officers and security officials can be wrong. It is a gross injustice to deprive of his liberty for significant periods a person who has committed no crime and does not intend to do so. No civilized country should willingly tolerate such injustices.
Tom Bingham
I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can't imagine someone else's point of view.
Sonia Sotomayor
For me, taking the sort of dry principles of the law and bringing them into contact with human beings . . . it's like you jump into hyperspace. And everything that's dull about the books and the theory becomes provocative.
Michael Ponsor
If changing judges changes law, then it is not clear what law is.
Judge Richard A. Posner
You only have one chance for a first impression.
Judy Sheindlin
As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.
Sonia Sotomayor
why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?
Bernhard Schlink
I've always believed phone calls from kids must be allowed if mothers are to feel welcome in the workplace, as anyone who has worked in my chambers can attest.
Sonia Sotomayor
It is as if people refused to leave their dead alone, forced them back into the light, made them keep their composure even in death.
Bernhard Schlink
They waited awhile before lighting the candles; the gloom allowed the past to slip cozily into the present. But the memories were of a time that was gone and didn't overshadow the present. But the memories were vivid, and they made the freinds feel both young and old...When Chrsitanne finally lit the candles and they saw one another clearly again, she was happy to see in the old faces of the others the young faces they had come across in their memories. we store our youth wihtin us, we can go back to it and find ourselves in it, but it is past--melancholy filled their hearsts, and sympahty, for one another and for themsleves.
Bernhard Schlink
What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?
Bernhard Schlink
Many of the gaps in my knowledge and understanding were simply limits of class and cultural background, not lack of aptitude or application as I feared. Page 135
Sonia Sotomayor
It is myopic to base sweeping change on the narrow experience of a few years.
Antonin Scalia
I accepted what the Sisters taught in religion class: that God is loving, merciful, charitable, forgiving. That message didn't jibe with adults smacking kids.
Sonia Sotomayor
Many of my classmates have happier memories of Blessed Sacrament, and in time I would find my own satisfaction in the classroom. My first years there, however, I met with little warmth. In part, it was that the nuns were critical of working mothers, and their disapproval was felt by latchkey kids. The irony of course was that my mother wouldn't have been working such long hours if not to pay for that education she believed was the key to any aspirations for a better life.
Sonia Sotomayor
If you want the best evidence of just how strong our democracy is, come into the courtroom.
Michael Ponsor
Did my moral upbrining somehow turn against itself? If looking at someone with desire was as bad as satisfying the desire, if having an active fantasy was as bad as the act you were fantasizing- then why not the satisfaction and the act itself? As the days went on, I discovered that I couldn't stop thinking sinful thoughts. In which case I also wanted the sin itself.
Bernhard Schlink
His leap was exact, mathematical. The initial arc - head tucked between taut arms that spread out gradually like wings - was as graceful as a swan dive.
Juan Filloy
... a surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence. Page 115
Sonia Sotomayor
Seeing my mother get back to her studies was all the proof I needed that a chain of emotion can persuade when one forged of logic won't hold. But more important was her example that a surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence. It was something I would remember often in years ahead, whenever faced with fears that I wasn't smart enough to succeed.
Sonia Sotomayor
That tide of insecurity would come in and out over the years, sometimes stranding me for a while but occasionally lifting me just beyond what I thought I could accomplish. Either way, it would wash over the same bedrock certainty: ultimately, I know myself. At each stage of my life, I've had a pretty clear notion of my needs and of what I was ready for.
Sonia Sotomayor
Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success...whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.
Bernhard Schlink
Without education … what is man but a splendid slave, a reasoning savage vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence derived from God and the degradation of passion participated with brutes…
Chukwudifu Oputa
When he answered, he went all the way back to beginnings. He instructed me about the individual, about freedom and dignity, about the human being as subject and the fact that one may not turn him into an object. “Don’t you remember how furious you would get as a little boy when Mama knew better what was good for you? Even how far one can act like this with children is a real problem. It is a philosophical problem, but philosophy does not concern itself with children. It leaves them to pedagogy, where they’re not in very good hands. Philosophy has forgotten about children.” He smiled at me. “Forgotten them forever, not just sometimes, the way I forget about you.”“But . . .”“But with adults I see absolutely no justification for setting other people’s views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves.”“Not even if they themselves are happy about it later?”He shook his head. “We’re not talking about happiness, we’re talking about dignity and freedom. Even as a little boy, you knew the difference. It was no comfort to you that your mother was always right.
Bernhard Schlink
Is that what makes me sad? The eagerness and belief that filled me then and exacted a pledge from life that life could never fulfill?
Bernhard Schlink
Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept?
Bernhard Schlink
I couldn’t even tell if I had any sadness of my own, because I was so full of Abuelita’s sadness.
Sonia Sotomayor
[T]he more critical lesson I learned that day is still one too many kids never figure out: don't be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing.
Sonia Sotomayor
You're looking at me as though I'm weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It's in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.
Antonin Scalia
Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.
Antonin Scalia
It was as if single nights had the duration of centuries, so within that time the most profound alterations in the whole of mankind, in the earth itself and the whole solar system could very well have taken place.
Daniel Paul Schreber
Philosophy has forgotten about children
Bernhard Schlink
I have come to believe that in order to thrive, a child must have at least one adult in her life who shows her unconditional love, respect, and confidence.
Sonia Sotomayor
Perhaps he was probing the enigma of why men fall in love with their dreams, which are then so destroyed by harsh realities that their dreamers become cuckolded by their own illusions. Perhaps...
Juan Filloy
I could never stop comparing the way it was with Gertrud and the way it had been with Hanna; again and again, Gertrud and I would hold each other, and I would feel that something was wrong, that she was wrong, that she moved wrong and felt wrong, smelled wrong and tasted wrong. I thought I would get over it. I hoped it would go away. I wanted to be free of Hanna. But I never got over the feeling that something was wrong.
Bernhard Schlink
Violent passions are formed in solitude. In the busy world no object has time to make a deep impression.
Henry Home
Dressing badly has been a refuge much of my life, a way of compelling others to engage with my mind, not my physical presence. Page. 283
Sonia Sotomayor
A written constitution is needed to protect values AGAINST prevailing wisdom.
Antonin Scalia
My grandmother always told me: beauty fades but dumb is forever.
Judge Judy Sheindlin
Beauty fades, dumb is forever.
Judy Sheindlin
Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.
Jacob M. Braude
Being ill when you are a child or growing up is such an enchanted interlude! The outside world, the world of free time in the yard or the garden or on the street, is only a distant murmmur in the sickroom. Inside, a whole world of characters and stories proliferate out of the books you read. The fever that weakens your perception as it sharpens your imagination turns the sickroom into something new, both familiar and strange; monsters come grinning out of the patterns on the curtains and the carpet, and chairs, tables, bookcases and wardrobes burst out of their normal shapes and become mountains and buildings and ships you can almost touch although they're far away. Through the long hours of the night you have the Church clock for company and the rumble of the occasional passing car that throws it's headlights across the walls and ceilings. These are hours without sleep, which is not to say they're sleepless, because on the contrary, they're not about lack of anything, they are rich and full. Desires, memories, fears, passions form labryinths in which we lose and find then lose ourselves again. They are hours where anything is possible, good or bad.
Bernhard Schlink
Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society.
Sonia Sotomayor
We make our own truths and lies....Truths are often lies and lies truths...
Bernhard Schlink
Când ne deschidemtu mie şi eu ţie,când ne scufundămtu în mine şi eu în tine,când ne pierdemtu în mine şi eu în tine,Abia atuncieu sunt euşi tu eşti tu.
Bernhard Schlink
Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?
Bernhard Schlink
Seit wir den Glauben und damit die Wahrheit verloren haben, liegt zwischen Heuchelei und Ehrlichkeit der letzte Unterschied, der uns bleibt.
Juli Zeh