The quote database

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.

Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

The constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

In regard to foreign nations, the groundwork of my policy will be justice on our part to all, submitting to injustice from none.

Now to keep faithful to the pure Counsellor, and under trying Circumstances suffer Adversity for Righteousness Sake, in this there is a Reward.

Have none of my Fellow Creatures an equitable Right to any Part which is called mine?

Deep-rooted Customs, though wrong, are not easily altered; but it is the Duty of every one to be firm in that which they certainly know is right for them.

The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color.

The observed worker should be made to realize the purpose and importance of the measurement. The observing should always be done with his full knowledge and hearty coöperation.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

The confirmed criminal is as much entitled to redress as his most virtuous fellow citizen; no record of crime, however long, makes one an outlaw.

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone

The real limit to be observed in friendship is this: the characters of two friends must be stainless.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.

Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.

The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application.

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other, arising from their necessary and unavoidable relations; which rights and duties there is no common human authority to protect and enforce.

Such persons should recollect that without law there can be no real practical liberty; that when law is trampled under foot tyranny rules, whether it appears in the form of a military despotism or of popular violence.

The law is the only sure protection of the weak and the only efficient restraint upon the strong.

We demand nothing more than this, and we will take nothing less.

Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.

This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain.