“History or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.”

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action. Judges cannot escape that current any more than other mortals.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.

Justice, though due to the accused, is due the accuser also. The concept of fairness cannot be strained till it is narrowed to a filament. We are to keep our balance true.

Law never is, but is always about to be.

The Constitution was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.

In the end the great truth will have been learned that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer that the prize (or rather, that the effort is the prize), the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigor of the game.

Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.

The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.

The difference is no less real because it is of degree.

Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.

We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.

With traps and obstacles and hazards confronting us on every hand, only blindness or indifference will fail to turn in all humility, for guidance or for warning, to the study of examples.

Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.

It is for ordinary minds, not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of administrative convenience, or practical expediency, and not in rules of logic.

Can anything good come of a backward way of thinking like judging someone based on skin color? No way.

After the French Revolution, it was not the treason of the king that was in question; it was the existence of the king. You have to be very careful when you judge and execute somebody for being a symbol.

After the fall of communism in Poland, we had a post-communist as president for two terms: Aleksander Kwasniewski. He was very good. He brought Poland into NATO and the European Union.

As I see it, my job as a writer isn’t to judge, but to take a reader as far inside as I can and let them dwell there.

My interest is always to get as deeply as I can into the minds and spirits of the characters and let the readers empathize or judge as they will.

Asking someone in advance not judge you, is like asking someone in advance not to smell you.

Well, I guess most people would only know me from The O.C. I did a few episodes of Gilmore Girls before that. I was also a client on a lot of lawyer shows.

God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by–by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don’t think God cares what doctrine we embrace.