Court Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

"Ha! Boulton," said the king. "It is long since we have seen you at court. Pray, what business are you now engaged in?" "I am engaged, your Majesty, in the production of a commodity which is the desire of kings." "And what is that? What is that?" "POWER, your majesty!"

Matthew Boulton

This great oracle of the East India Company himself admits that, if there is no power vested in the Court of Directors but that of the patronage, there is really no government vested in them at all.

A court of heraldry sprung up to supply the place of crusade exploits, to grant imaginary shields and trophies to families that never wore real armor, and it is but of late that it has been discovered to have no real jurisdiction.

William Shenstone

Certain trifling flaws sit as disgracefully on a character of elegance as a ragged button on a court dress.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The court's recent understanding of religion as a private matter for individuals has plainly become malnourished and impoverished.

Stephen V. Monsma

To be true to its constitutional role, the Supreme Court should refuse to be drawn into making public policy, and it should strike down legislation only when a clear constitutional violation exists. When judicial activists resort to various inventions and theories to impose their personal views on privacy and liberty, they jeopardize the legitimacy of the judiciary as an institution and undermine the role of the other branches of government.

I once talked to a judge who said that he spent his life in court being skeptical of witnesses who couldn't give an account of incidents they claimed they had seen. Then one day he was in the street and an accident happened right in front of his eyes. He had a full view of everything that occurred, and afterwards he could not give any account of what he had seen. Good reporters feel the same sort of difficulties. Like scientists they have to slowly change their expectations of the world, and take into account the discrepancies between what they see and what they are expecting to see.

There is one court whose "findings" are incontrovertible, and whose sessions are held in the chambers of our own breast.

It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.

William O. Douglas

The 18th century judge Lord Mansfield didn't pay attention to religious holidays and had proposed that the Court would sit on Good Friday:

If your Lordship pleases. But your Lordship will be the first judge who has done so since Pontius Pilate.

The Court did not sit

If the plan [to intercept the shogunate emissary to the Kyoto court] is to be carried out, it can only be done with men from the grass roots. To wear silk brocades, eat dainty food, hug beautiful women, and fondle darling children are the only things hereditary officials care about. To revere the emperor and expel the barbarian is no concern of theirs. If this time it should be my misfortune to die, may my death inspire at least one or two men of steadfast will to rise up and uphold this principle after my death.

Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep's clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf.

Well they have taken a few steps. They have arrested few persons and they are being tried by court in Pakistan but India feels that isn't enough. I think they will have to do more on this front.

Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends... every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

John Brown (abolitionist)

Am a servant of Rama,
Accredited to His Court,
What for should I
Be a Courier of man?

Being Number One isn't everything to me, but for those few hours on the court it's way ahead of whatever's in second place.

Billie Jean King

This Court now concludes that independent [political] expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

Anthony Kennedy

The Court is perhaps one of the last citadels of jealously preserved individualism. For the most part, we function as nine, small independent law firms.

Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

Today's decision is the pinnacle of our Eighth Amendment death-is-different jurisprudence. Not only does it, like all of that jurisprudence, find no support in the text or history of the Eighth Amendment; it does not even have support in current social attitudes regarding the conditions that render an otherwise just death penalty inappropriate. Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members.

New Rule: Gay marriage won't lead to dog marriage. It is not a slippery slope to rampant inter-species coupling. When women got the right to vote, it didn't lead to hamsters voting. No court has extended the equal protection clause to salmon. And for the record, all marriages are "same sex" marriages. You get married, and every night, it's the same sex.

I hardly expected the grand jury to sustain me, after they saw everything different from what it had been while I was there. Yet they did, and their report to the court advises all the changes made that I had proposed.

I am a judge born, raised, and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition. I hope, in my years on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and the courage to remain constant in the service of that demand.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.

The UK can be proud of its real contribution to this unique system and its influence in bringing about effective human rights protection throughout the European continent. It would be deeply regrettable if it were to allow its commitment to that system to be called into question by a failure to defend it against its detractors or to offer its strong support for the vital work of the court.

Many young poets, nowadays, are insured against everything. For them poetry is a game like court tennis or squash racquets — one they learned at college — and they play it with propriety, as part of their social and academic existence; their poems are occasional verse for which life itself is only one more occasion.

Randall Jarrell