“If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything-and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.”

The only people who have quick answers don’t have the responsibility of making the decisions.

But what I believe is that if a person’s individual rights or right to be a part of our economic system is violated under statute, we aggressively go after it. But we don’t issue mandates to businesses that you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that.

We’ve talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.

I don’t really have the luxury to be bitter. I don’t have the luxury of having negative things in my life.

My grandfather was a man, when he talked about freedom, his attitude was really interesting. His view was that you had obligations or you had responsibilities, and when you fulfilled those obligations or responsibilities, that then gave you the liberty to do other things.

I don’t know one of my friends who is considered a conservative who has not had to go back and thoroughly think through everything. You do a lot of soul-searching – ’cause we are not going to win any popularity contests.

A theory deeply etched in our law is that a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse the rights of free speech after they break the law rather than to throttle them and all others beforehand.

I have to admit that I’m one of those people that thinks the dishwasher is a miracle.

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.

Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost.

I don’t know people who don’t say ‘boy, the government is working better now.’

The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.

People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?

Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.

The Declaration of Independence says when government fails, the people have the right to replace it. Well, New York State government has failed and the people have the right, indeed the people have the the people have the obligation, to act.

I’ve been not only articulating the dissatisfaction with Albany, I’ve been acting on it. I’ve been very aggressive in bringing public integrity cases and public corruption cases and bringing cases against sitting legislators

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.