Quotes by Supreme Court Justices

Slaying the dragon of delay is no sport for the short-winded.
Sandra Day O'Connor
We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few but we can't have both.
Louis D. Brandeis
No one can really pull you up very high-you lose your grip on the rope. But on your own two feet you can climb mountains.
Louis Brandeis
The most important office is that of private citizen.
Louis D. Brandeis
The most important office is that of private citizen.
Louis D. Brandeis
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient.
Louis Brandeis
The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.
Sandra Day O'Connor
[O]ne man's vulgarity is another's lyric.
John Marshall Harlan
Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Even in my own time and in my own life, I have witnessed a revolution.
Sandra Day O'Connor
I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
Thurgood Marshall
Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law.
John Marshall Harlan
The sure guaranty of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recognition by our governments, national and state, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of the equality before the law of all citizens of the United States, without regard to race. State enactments regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war, under the pretense of recognizing equality of rights, can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible, and to keep alive a conflict of races, the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned.
John Marshall Harlan
But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved.
John Marshall Harlan
If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced sil
Louis D. Brandeis
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
Louis D. Brandeis
The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions -- knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas -- become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use."~Louis D. Brandeis
Louis D. Brandeis
Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine, and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite. The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.[Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 1968.]
Abe Fortas
The enormous difference between fighting gender discrimination as opposed to race discrimination is good people immediately perceive race discrimination as evil and intolerable. But when I talked about sex-based discrimination, I got the response, 'What are you talking about? Women are treated ever so much better than men!
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I have never thought that the man of Stratford-on-Avon wrote the plays of Shakespeare.
Lewis F. Powell Jr.
Nothing can be more notorious than the calumnies and invectives with which the wisest measures and most virtuous characters of The United States have been pursued and traduced [By American Newspapers]
Thurgood Marshall
A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understan
Louis D. Brandeis
A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens.
Sandra Day O'Connor
We cannot play ostrich. Democracy just cannot flourish amid fear. Liberty cannot bloom amid hate. Justice cannot take root amid rage. America must get to work. In the chill climate in which we live, we must go against the prevailing wind. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
Thurgood Marshall
When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.
Harry A. Blackmun
Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?
Sandra Day O'Connor