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the liberty of association is become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority

The loss of liberty, of all good government, of peace, plenty, and happiness, must inevitably follow a dissolution of the Union.

Now military governments, established for an indefinite period, would have offered no security for the early suppression of discontent, would have divided the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished, and would have envenomed hatred rather than have restored affection.

Men may die, but the fabrics of our free institutions remain unshaken.

The wisdom of our fathers, foreseeing even the most dire possibilities, made sure that the Government should never be imperiled because of the uncertainty of human life.

The defining character of American constitutional government is its constant tension between security and liberty, serving both by partial helpings of each.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex

It is better for those who have almost unlimited power of government in their hands to err on the side of freedom.

A grave responsibility confronts this Court whenever in course of litigation it must reconcile the conflicting claims of liberty and authority.

The student’s goal is Poise! Poise is Power.

A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.

Government has a right to survive and powers conferred upon it are not necessarily set at naught by the express prohibitions of the Bill of Rights.

Our whole system of self-government will crumble either if officials elect what laws they will enforce or citizens elect what laws they will support.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.

A President may sense and proclaim that new spirit, but only a people can provide it.

In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.

There is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments.

For the first time in our history the person elected to the Vice-Presidency of the United States, by the happening of a contingency provided for in the Constitution, has had devolved upon him the Presidential office.

in the exercise of this high power, we must be ever on our guard, lest we erect our prejudices into legal principles

there is no surer or more necessary restraint on the violence of an unruly multitude, than the presence of some one whose character and bearing command respect

It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.

Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.

A man's power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc.