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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.

Antonin Scalia

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Majority Right Worth
Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress, if it wants to use it. It can do anything-it can stop the Vietnam War. It can make its will felt, if it can ever get its act together to do anything.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Corruption Politics Power Togetherness War Willing
People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Better Exercise People Right Yourself
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?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Frame Job Practice Time
Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Allow Constitution Discrimination Rule Sex
But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of our cities.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Believe Hands Ourselves Soldier
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Change Democracy Freedom Law Right Speech System Virtue
Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Law World Yourself
I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Acceptance Argument Encouragement Myself Sexuality
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Convert Guarantee Process Race Sex Willing
One can be sophisticated and believe in God. Reason and intellect are not to be laid aside where matters of religion are concerned.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Believe God Intellectual Reason Religion Sophistication
Devout Christians are destined to be regarded as fools in modern society. We are fools for Christ’s sake. We must pray for courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Destiny Fools Modern Regard Society World
A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Close Search Table
The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Absolution Break Criminal Death State
Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Bed Burn Room Sanity
A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Basement Journey Machine Purpose
This is so absurd that it has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Knowledge Myself Weird
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Ambience Contradiction Model Respect Statement
Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Change Meaning Word
Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State”.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Establishment Meaning State Word
Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Freedom Intimacy Marriage Oneself Spirituality
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.’
ANTONIN SCALIA

Children Creation Independence Parents Right
This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Execution Pain Surgery
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Fight Government Religion Thinking True
Rather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress to decide what to do about the Act’s limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Credit Decision exchange Law Limitation Tax Writing
You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations until they were all litigated out.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Different Regulation State Yourself
If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Feeling Moral Murder Sexuality

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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