Court Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The true simple question of the present dispute is, whether the House of Lords and Court Influence shall predominate over the House of Commons, and annihilate its existence, or whether the House of Commons... shall have power to.... regulate the prerogative of the Crown, which was ever ready to seize upon the freedom of the Electors of this country.

Charles James Fox

If I'm a young black man in South Central L. A., where poverty is rampant and unemployment is skyrocketing, I see that Washington's promises of a year ago have gone unfulfilled, I see that perhaps for a second time, the court's inability to mete out justice in a blind fashion, why shouldn't I vent my anger?

Take here the grand secret; if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none, and court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

There is a kind of harmful modesty which … sometimes affects men of superior character to their detriment by keeping them in a state of mediocrity. I am reminded of the remark that a certain gentleman of acknowledged eminence once made at luncheon to some persons of the Court, "How bitterly I regret the time I wasted merely to learn how superior I am to all of you!"

Nicolas Chamfort

As an actor, you're sort of the court-appointed lawyer for the character. And that's what used to draw me to scripts – something in a woman that I wanted to defend, something that I recognized or wanted to understand, something that turned my head.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

If an infant commit an assault, or utter slander, God forbid that he should not be answerable for it in a Court of justice.

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

My distinction is, that in incorrect wills the Court may take liberties, but that if the words are correct they have no power to make any alteration.

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet

How did the hearing go? she asked. We won, sort of, Kaldar said. We die at dawn. The court gave the Sheeriles twenty-four hours, William corrected. Yes, but 'we die at dawn the day after tomorrow' doesn't sound nearly as dramatic. Does it have to be dramatic all the time? Catherine murmured. Of course. Everyone has a talent. Yours is crocheting and mine is making melodramatic statements.

The men of my group who are under indictment here were under my military command. If they had not executed the orders which they were given, they would have been ordered by me to execute them. If they had refused to execute the orders they would have had to be called to account for it by me. There could be no doubt about it. Whoever refused anything in the front lines would have met immediate death. If the refusal would have come about in any other way, a court martial of the Higher SS and Police Leader would have brought about the same consequences.

Religious history also offers another striking parallel between Rome and China. The Buddhist faith began to penetrate the Han empire in the first century A. D., and soon won converts in high places. Its period of official dominance in court circles extended from the third to the ninth centuries A. D. This obviously parallels the successes that came to Christianity in the Roman empire during the same period.

William Hardy McNeill

When the Court see reason to suspect that justice has not been done to any particular defendant, they will in their discretion direct a further enquiry into the merits of the cause.

William Henry Ashurst

This Court will always know to temper mercy with justice where there is room for it.

William Henry Ashurst

I will on thee as on a comet look,
A comet, the sad world's ill-boding book;
Thy light as luctual and stain'd with woes
I'll judge, where penal flames sit mixt and close.
But though some think thou shin'st but to restrain
Bold storms, and simply dost attend on rain;
Yet I know well, and so our sins require,
Thou dost but court cold rain, till rain turns fire.

I find the speech in this case patently offensive, hateful, and insulting. The Court should not, however, gloss over three decades of jurisprudence and the centrality of First Amendment freedoms in our lives because it is confronted with speech it does not like.

Sonia Sotomayor

The artists and donors and priests forgot nothing which, in their judgment could set off the authority, elegance and refinement of the Queen of Heaven; even the young ladies-in-waiting are there, figured by the twelve Virtues and the fourteen Beatitudes; and indeed, though men are plenty and some of them are handsome, women give the tone, the charm, and mostly the intelligence. The court of Mary is feminine, and its charms are Grace and Love; perhaps even more grace than love, in a social sense, if you look at Beauty and Friendship among Beatitudes.

Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry: But that is how I see it.

Walter M. Miller, Jr.

This Court is forever adding new stories to the temples of constitutional law, and the temples have a way of collapsing when one story too many is added.

Robert H. Jackson

Beware of the problem of testing too many hypotheses; the more you torture the data, the more likely they are to confess, but confessions obtained under duress may not be admissible in the court of scientific opinion.

Stephen Stigler

There is no such thing as justice — in or out of court.

Clarence Darrow

I have ventured to write more intimately about my personal life than is customary for a member of the Supreme Court, and with that candor comes a measure of vulnerability.

Sonia Sotomayor

Hush,—for the halo of calmness is spreading
Over my spirit as mild as a dove;
Hush,—for the angel of comfort is shedding
Over my body his vial of love;
Hush,—for new slumbers are over me stealing,
Thus would I court them again and again,
Hush,—for my heart is intoxicate,—reeling
In the swift waltz of my beautiful brain!

Martin Farquhar Tupper

There is no one force, no group, and no class that is the preserver of liberty. Liberty is preserved by those who are against the existing chief power. Oppositions which do not express genuine social forces are as trivial, in relation to entrenched power, as the old court jesters.

Within a surprisingly short space of time, however, the fortunes of the neo-roman theory began to decline and fall. … One reason for this collapse was that the social assumptions underlying the theory began to appear outdated and even absurd. With the extension of the manners of the court to the bourgeoisie in the early eighteenth century, the virtues of the independent country gentleman began to look irrelevant and even inimical to a polite commercial age. The hero of the neo-roman writers came to be viewed not as plain-hearted but as rude and boorish; not as upright but as obstinate and quarrelsome; not as a man of fortitude but of mere insensibility.

Quentin Skinner

Nouns of number, or multitude, such as Mob, Parliament, Rabble, House of Commons, Regiment, Court of King's Bench, Den of Thieves, and the like.

William Cobbett