All quotes

They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.

Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other, arising from their necessary and unavoidable relations; which rights and duties there is no common human authority to protect and enforce.

Such persons should recollect that without law there can be no real practical liberty; that when law is trampled under foot tyranny rules, whether it appears in the form of a military despotism or of popular violence.

The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application.

The law is the only sure protection of the weak and the only efficient restraint upon the strong.

We demand nothing more than this, and we will take nothing less.

The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower sense is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result.

This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain.

a Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the state or of laissez faire

freedom in speech is friendly and has weight, but reproach is selfish and little

He who is wise tries to harmonise the wishes that seek for self-gratification with the wish for the social good, and only thus can he realise his higher self.

Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.

Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote,--justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility.

The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion

"Inherent differences" between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity.

neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with the equal protection principle when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature -- equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities

We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution.

Extreme altruism is no better and no nobler than extreme selfishness; both are mistakes.

Marshall's statement cannot be read to mean in any sense that a President is above the law