“It really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I’m supposed to think.”

Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.

The job of a judge is to figure out what the law says, not what he wants it to say. There is a difference between the role of a judge and that of a policy maker… Judging requires a certain impartiality.

It takes a person with a mission to succeed.

And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now.

Today, now, it is time to move forward, a time to look for what is good in others, what is good in our country. It is time to see what we have in common, what we have to share as human beings and citizens.

The Constitution does not vest in Congress the authority to protect society from every bad act that might befall it. If followed to its logical extreme, [this approach] would result in an unwarranted expansion of federal power.

Unfortunately, the reality was that, for political reasons or whatever, there was a need to enforce antidiscrimination laws, or at least there was a perceived need to do that.

Perhaps some are confused because they have stereotypes of how blacks should be and I respectfully decline, as I did in my youth, to sacrifice who I am for who they think I should be.

You have a number of choices. You could continue to always fight against people who are really distractions. They’re people in the cheap seats of life. Or you can do what you went there to do.

You didn’t think of angels as white or black. They were angels.

The thing that bothered me when I was in college was that I saw myself rejecting the way of life that got me to where I was.

I was sympathetic to virtually all groups that wanted to get away from the old system.

I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.

In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well, today’s decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter.

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.

The courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior. The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.

It’s only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.

I don’t operate on fear, and I don’t let fear control me.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

I exercise strong self control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.

The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies

You have to be secure with the ball. You can’t lose it.

Control is not real, and I’m really understanding that every day. It’s about the acceptance of relinquishing control that makes it powerful for you.

Fascism, most of the students agreed, is an extreme form of authoritarian rule. Citizens are required to do exactly what leaders say they must do, nothing more, nothing less.