"The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self."
Read quote
24 likes
Quote collection
Hugo Black quotes (page 2 of 3)
59 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"[I]t is true that [the provisions of the Bill of Rights] were designed to meet ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from century to century whenever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense of the many."
Read quote
24 likes
"I do not believe that it can be too often repeated that the freedoms of speech, press, petition and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish. The first banning of an association because it advocates hated ideas - whether that association be called a political party or not - marks a fateful moment in the history of a free country."
Read quote
23 likes
"The first ten amendments were proposed and adopted largely because of fear that Government might unduly interfere with prized individual liberties. The people wanted and demanded a Bill of Rights written into their Constitution. The amendments embodying the Bill of Rights were intended to curb all branches of the Federal Government in the fields touched by the amendments-Legislative, Executive, and Judicial."
Read quote
21 likes
"No higher duty, or more solemn responsibility, rests upon this Court than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution - of whatever race, creed or persuasion."
Read quote
20 likes
"The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."
Read quote
17 likes
"The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to... bare the secrets of government and inform the people."
Read quote
17 likes
"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."
Read quote
17 likes
"The lesson which wars and depressions have taught is that if we want peace, prosperity and happiness at home we must help to establish them abroad."
Read quote
14 likes
"Freedom to speak and write about public questions is as important to the life of our government as is the heart to the human body. In fact, this privilege is the heart of our government. If that heart be weakened, the result is debilitation; if it be stilled, the result is death."
Read quote
12 likes
"The Court stands against any winds that blow as havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless, weak, outnumbered, or because they are nonconforming victims of prejudice or public excitement."
Read quote
11 likes
"The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs."
Read quote
10 likes
"I am for the First Amendment from the first word to the last. I believe it means what it says."
Read quote
10 likes
"In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspaper should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly."
Read quote
10 likes
"No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance."
Read quote
10 likes
"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."
Read quote
9 likes
"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."
Read quote
8 likes
"The United States has a system of taxation by confession"
Read quote
8 likes
"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."
Read quote
8 likes
"In my judgment the people of no nation can lose their liberty so long as a Bill of Rights like ours survives and its basic purposes are conscientiously interpreted, enforced and respected so as to afford continuous protection against old, as well as new, devices and practices which might thwart those purposes. I fear to see the consequences of the Court's practice of substituting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the language of the Bill of Rights as its point of departure in interpreting and enforcing that Bill of Rights."
Read quote
8 likes