Hugo Black Quotes (19 Quotes)

Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.

The layman's constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that which he doesn't like is unconstitutional.

A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion.

In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

When I was 40, my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn't play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again.

The flagrant disregard in the courtroom of elementary standards of proper conduct should not and cannot be tolerated.

I was brought up to believe that Scotch whisky would need a tax preference to survive in competition with Kentucky bourbon.

The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to bare the secrets of government and inform the people.

The constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that in this country it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as part

We believe trial judges confronted with disruptive, contumacious, stubbornly defiant defendants must be given sufficient discretion to meet the circumstances in each case.

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to stand as a guarantee that neither the power nor the prestige of the Federal Government would be used to control, support or influence the kinds of prayer the American people can say - that the peop

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.

The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

It would degrade our country and our judicial system to permit our courts to be bullied, insulted and humiliated and the orderly progress thwarted and obstructed by defendants brought before them charged with crimes.

Chief justices come and go, ... Some are more influential than others because they are greater lawyers. Sometimes chief justices are more influential than others because they have a talent for that.

Laws are made to protect the trusting as well as the suspicious.