Warren E. Burger Quotes

To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.

A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.

We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians.

The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state; it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.

The right of every person "to be let alone" must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.

There may be some incorrigible human beings who cannot be changed except by God's own mercy to that one person.

The trial of a case is a three-legged stool - a judge and two advocates.

Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values.

Trials by the adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood.

Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.

Doctors still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?

We may be well on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated.

Guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant in the criminal trials as we flounder in a morass of artificial rules poorly conceived and often impossible [to apply].

The State may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.

There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.

It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to discover a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.

The president's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts.

[No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.