Harlan F. Stone Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest.

Harlan F. Stone
Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.

Harlan F. Stone
Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.

Harlan F. Stone
Words, especially those of a constitution, are not to be read with such stultifying narrowness.

Harlan F. Stone
There is grim irony in speaking of the freedom of contract of those who, because of their economic necessities, give their service for less than is needful to keep body and soul together.

Harlan F. Stone
History teaches us that there have been but few infringements of personal liberty by the state which have not been justified, as they are here, in the name of righteousness and the public good, and few which have not been directed, as they are now, at politically helpless minorities.

Harlan F. Stone
Thus viewed, law as it exists in the modern community may be conveniently, although perhaps not comprehensively, defined as the sum total of all those rules of conduct for which there is state sanction.

Harlan F. Stone
The right to participate in the choice of representatives for Congress includes, as we have said, the right to cast a ballot and to have it counted at the general election whether for the successful candidate or not.

Harlan F. Stone
The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.

Harlan F. Stone
Just what instrumentalities of either a state or the federal government are exempt from taxation by the other cannot be stated in terms of universal application.

Harlan F. Stone
The guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them... The very essence of the liberty which they guarantee is the freedom of the individual from compulsion as to what he shall think and what he shall say...

Harlan F. Stone
While unconstitutional exercise of power by the executive and legislative branches of the government is subject to judicial restraint, the only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint. For the removal of unwise laws from the statute books appeal lies not to the courts but to the ballot and to the processes of democratic government.

Harlan F. Stone