“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.”

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.

The courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior. The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.

When you look at where the real problems are among minorities in our society, particularly blacks, it’s at the bottom. It’s the people who are in school systems that don’t educate, neighborhoods where there is a lot of crime, drugs, the whole bit.

My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.

It really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I’m supposed to think.

I actually think that I have been fortunate to have had misfortune, because the response, in responding to the misfortune, you develop in your own life, you develop sort of the tools you need to continue on, or to do better.

And I don’t think that government has a role in telling people how to live their lives. Maybe a minister does, maybe your belief in God does, maybe there’s another set of moral codes, but I don’t think government has a role.

Any discrimination, like sharp turns in a road, becomes critical because of the tremendous speed at which we are traveling into the high-tech world of a service economy.

Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice.

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 truth of the matter is we have become more interested in designer jeans and break dancing than we are in obligations and responsibilities.

The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.

Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah.

I grew up in a religious environment, and I’m proud of it.

I was smart enough to use pot without getting caught, and now I’m on the Supreme Court. If you were stupid enough to get caught, that’s your problem. Your appeal is denied. This 40 year sentence just might teach you a lesson.

I love being around people who work with their hands, who do the hard things to keep our country going. They’re just my kind of people.

Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.

I’m glad we had the times together just to laugh and sing a song, seems like we just got started and then before you know it, the times we had together were gone.

It is so easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build.

When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.

What barrier is there that love cannot break?

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.

Some things were better lost than found.