“I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for and so novel.”

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

The greatest wisdom is to get to know oneself.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man.

Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

Nature does not act by means of many things when it can do so by means of a few.

It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.

The deeper I go in considering the vanities of popular reasoning, the lighter and more foolish I find them.

Passion is the genesis of genius.

Earth, turning upon itself, moves round the Sun.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

Two truths cannot contradict one another.

Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.

Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.

General rules will bear hard on particular cases.

Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong.

You don’t doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same sex-marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you? As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case.

Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.

Policemen are numbered in case they get lost.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.