Robert H. Jackson Quotes

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion - except for the sect that can win political power.

It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power.

I see no reason why I should be consciously wrong today because I was unconsciously wrong yesterday.

The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.

One's right to life, liberty, and property depends on the outcome of no election.

The most odious of all oppressions are those which mask as justice.

The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.

The very purpose of a bill of rights is to withdraw certain subjects from...political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities.

Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.

Not every defeat of authority is a gain for individual freedom, nor every judicial rescue of a convict a victory for liberty.

There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

We are not final because we are infallible, but infallible only because we are final.

Education should be a lifelong process, the formal period serving as a foundation on which life's structure may rest and rise.

Had the jury convicted on proper instructions it would be the end of the matter. But juries are not bound by what seems inescapable logic to judges.

Civil government cannot let any group ride roughshod over others simply because their consciences tell them to do so.

We can afford no liberties with liberty itself.

When the Supreme Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.

The petitioner's problem is to avoid Scylla without being drawn into Charybdis.

While the Nation has forbidden monopoly by one set of laws it has been creating them by another. Patent laws, valuable as they may be in some respects, often father monopoly.

Your job today tells me nothing of your future--your use of your leisure today tells me just what your tomorrow will be.

A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man's comfort and inspiration is another's jest and scorn.

But the validity of a doctrine does not depend on whose ox it gores.

The office of the lawyer ... is too delicate, personal and confident to be occupied by a corporation.

It is hardly lack of due process for the Government to regulate that which it subsidizes.

Due process requires some definite link, some minimum connection, between a state and the person, property or transaction it seeks to tax.

It is only the words of the bill that have presidential approval, where that approval is given. It is not to be supposed that in signing a bill the President endorses the whole Congressional Record.

The mere state of being without funds is a neutral fact constitutionally an irrelevance, like race, creed, or color.

In this court the parties changed positions as nimbly as if dancing a quadrille.

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.

The duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens.

There is no such thing as an achieved liberty: like electricity, there can be no substantial storage and it must be generated as it is enjoyed, or the lights go out.

It is possible to hold a faith with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar.

I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.