Court Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

There has been much undiscriminating eulogy of dissenting opinions…. Each dissenting opinion is a confession of failure to convince the writer's colleagues and the true test of a judge is his influence in leading, not in opposing, his court.

Robert H. Jackson

And Lincoln pointed out that this argument—which the Court applied to the territories—could also equally well be applied to the states, so that the prospect of slavery becoming national, not only through the spread into the new territories but in the spread to the states, was very great. This was Lincoln's argument.

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune

John Greenleaf Whittier

Born and bred, so to say, in Chancery, I have a strong leaning towards the rule of the Court of Chancery, of requiring full discovery.

Arthur Kekewich

Black Court vampires. I just shortened it some." Ebenezar tsked. "Blampires. That's the problem with you young people. Shortening all the words.

I didn't hire you to come here and lie! That's a true note. I signed it. I'll pay it.… What I employed you for was to get this business put over to the next court — not come here and lie and juggle about it!

Is there a Legislative power in fact, not expressly prohibited by the Constitution, which might not, according to the doctrine of the Court, be exercised as a means of carrying into effect some specified Power?

A Court has no right to strain the law because it causes hardship.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

... the American people seemed to have no clearer idea than they. Indeed, the American people had no idea at all; they were wandering in a wilderness much more sandy than the Hebrews had ever trodden about Sinai; they had neither serpents nor golden calves to worship. They had lost the sense of worship; for the idea that they worshipped money seemed a delusion. Worship of money was an old-world trait; a healthy appetite akin to worship of the Gods, or to worship of power in any concrete shape; but the American wasted money more recklessly than any one ever did before; he spent more to less purpose than any extravagant court aristocracy; he had no sense of relative values, and knew not what to do with his money when he got it

When I see British people sitting in the court to try me, remembering that the English people are proud of that word "Fair play," I am confident that I will be blessed by God and by man also. Not only Bishop Bourget spoke to me in that way, but Father Jean-Baptiste Bruno, the priest of Worcester, who was my director of conscience, said to me: "Riel, God has put an object into your hands the cause of the triumph of religion in the world, take care, you will succeed when most believe you have lost." I have got those words in my head, those words of J. B. Bruno and the late Archbishop Bourget.

Kubrick wasn't making a movie when I was working with him. He was preparing to make a movie, which is something quite different. Part of the charm of working with a director like Kubrick, if there is or was a director like him, was that during the privileged period before he even showed (the script) to the studio, it was just between him and me. You are sort of creating a game in the ball court of theory. There is no film being shot; there is no budget. It was in many ways a very exciting time. It's also very fraught, particularly for a writer, because you don't know if it's going to be of any point.

Frederic Raphael

The analysis is clear, we have a great problem with Islam, in the Netherlands too. The solution is not so complicated; what is missing are political guts and a feeling of urgency. Immigration from Islamic countries should be forbidden. We must learn to be intolerant with the intolerant, in the street, in the mosque and in court. We must answer hatred and violence from terrorists with exclusion and intolerance and show who's the boss in The Netherlands.

I would never be involved in an illegal activity. I believe I was related to the coup because I was criticising the Chaudry Government. When Chaudry became Prime Minister he was very unfair to my companies, infrastructure wise, and I was taking him to court and to the media. In the midst of this the coup happened. Mr Qarase, who became the Prime Minister, was previously Assistant Chairman of one of my companies where I was the Chairman. These were the reasons that have caused the rumours. Yes, I did not like the Chaudry government but no, I was not related to the coup plot.

Both the court and the general public give a conventional value to men and things, and then are surprised to find themselves deceived by it. This is as if arithmeticians should give a variable an arbitrary value to the figures in a sum, and then, after restoring their true and regular value in the addition, be astonished at the incorrectness of their answer.

Nicolas Chamfort

You must be painter who takes a canvas and does what he likes with it. We are more like painters in past centuries who were ordered to paint frescoes to specific measurements. Among the people in the fresco may be a bishop, the prince's wife, etc. The fresco isn't bad simply because the painter used for models people from the court of the prince who ordered and paid for it.

Michelangelo Antonioni

No man can come into a British Court of justice to seek the assistance of the law who founds his claim upon a contravention of the British laws.

Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley

This seems to me to be one of those cases in which the Court is bound to arrive at a conclusion without having any satisfactory means of arriving at it. The only guide I have is this. I am entitled to sit in the testator's chair as he wrote his own will.

Arthur Kekewich

He is a true friend and sincere relative who cooperates and stands by in time of need, depression, misfortune, famine, a war, in a king's court, or at he crematorium (the place of last rituals where the dead are put on a pyre).

What today's decision will stand for, whether the Justices can bring themselves to say it or not, is the power of the Supreme Court to write a prophylactic, extraconstitutional Constitution, binding on Congress and the States.

Who will demand accountability for the failure of our national political leadership involved in the management of this war? They have unquestionably been derelict in the performance of their duty. In my profession, these types of leaders would immediately be relieved or court martialed.

Ricardo Sanchez

Ever since the first day I arrived in this town, the general impression has been that I'm like a queen holding court on chosen days.

The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write in the books.

Eldridge Cleaver

The Court exercises its jurisdiction for the enforcement of the truth, and makes a man's acts square with his words, by compelling him to perform what he has undertaken.

John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly

We've been waiting 30 years to end the lunacy of nine demigods on the Supreme Court deciding every burning social issue of the day for us, loyal subjects in a judicial theocracy. We don't want someone who will decide those issues for us — but decide them "our" way. If we did, a White House bureaucrat with good horse sense might be just the ticket.

The Supreme Court is an institution far more dominated by centrifugal forces, pushing toward individuality and independence, than it is by centripetal forces pulling for hierarchical ordering and institutional unity.

William Rehnquist