American Jurist Quotes

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Elizabeth Warren

Kurt Schuschnigg

John Roberts

Anthony Kennedy

W. Willard Wirtz

William Stoughton

See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The most innocent man, pressed by the awful solemnities of public accusation and trial, many be incapable of supporting his own cause. He may be utterly unfit to cross-examine the witnesses against him, to point out the contradictions or defects of their testimony. And to counteract it by properly introducing it and applying his own.

The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.

The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.

Anthony Kennedy

The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

The situation changed visibly when sentimental reasons and long-term political aims gave way to a stern, ruthless nationalist ideology which would brook no compromise. Hitler had categorically demanded the Anschluss in "Mein Kampf".... As early as 1923 Hitler had decide that, if necessary, the National-Socialists must take over the government in Austria by force.

Kurt Schuschnigg

God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness.

William Stoughton

The bankers might not have said it in so many words, but gradually their strategy emerged: Target families who were already in a little trouble, lend them more money, get them entangled in high fees and astronomical interest rates, and then block the doors to the bankruptcy exit if they really got in over their heads.

Elizabeth Warren

Commencement speakers have a good deal in common with grandfather clocks: Standing usually some six feet tall, typically ponderous in construction, more traditional than functional, their distinction is largely their noisy communication of essentially commonplace information. - Commencement address at University of Iowa.

W. Willard Wirtz

Seditious libel is the doctrine that flourished in England during and after the Star Chamber. It is the hallmark of closed societies throughout the world. Under it, criticism of government is viewed as defamation and punished as a crime.

Either the men of Galilee were men of superlative wisdom, and extensive knowledge and experience, and of deeper skill in the arts of deception than any and all others, before them or after them, or they have truly stated astonishing things which they saw and heard.

Simon Greenleaf

Our government leaders... have made many mistakes in the past when they have lost sight of the sacred American values rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We are at the brink of even graver mistakes and assaults on these values.