“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.”

I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion.

Campaign promises are – by long democratic tradition – the least binding form of human commitment.

Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change.

It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction.

As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to ‘do what the people want,’ instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.

[International law] doesn’t show what the Constitution originally meant, and it doesn’t show what is fundamentally important to Americans today. It shows what’s fundamentally important to somebody else today.

The virtue of a democratic system with a [constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly.

A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State”.

The Court today completes the process of converting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for often will.

Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the unalienable rights with which the Declaration of Independence proclaims ‘all Men are endowed by their Creator.’

Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.

There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.

The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.

The court’s job is to uphold the Constitution and you don’t call that off in times of crisis. Would the framers have allowed this practice?

I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do – and not only for operating, but for everything.

Everything is always decided for reasons other than the real merits of the case.

If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility.

And if this were so in all cases, the principle would be established, that sometimes conditions can be treated by things opposite to those from which they arose, and sometimes by things like to those from which they arose.

Just ’cause something’s popular, it can still be good. In fact, if more people are buying it, then you must be doing something right.

It is better not to apply any treatment in cases of occult cancer; for if treated (by surgery), the patients die quickly; but if not treated, they hold out for a long time.

Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.