“Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.”

Those who serve upon our juries have maintained a standard of fairness and excellence and demonstrated a vision toward the administration of justice that is a wellspring of inspiration.

To separate children from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.

Before this distinguished assembly and the world, the bells today proclaim the joyous tidings of the completion of this quietly soaring tower.

I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people’s accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man’s failures.

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defence, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defence of our nation worthwhile.

Our War of the Revolution was, in good measure, fought as a protest against standing armies.

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior.

Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional. All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.

We are now at the point where we must decide whether we are to honour the concept of a plural society which gains strength through diversity, or whether we are to have bitter fragmentation that will result in perpetual tension and strife.

Ben Franklin may have discovered electricity- but it is the man who invented the meter who made the money.

If it is a mistake of the head and not the heart don’t worry about it, that’s the way we learn.

The censor’s sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.

A republic is not an easy form of government to live under, and when the responsibility of citizenship is evaded, democracy decays and authoritarianism takes over.

What is dishonorably got, is dishonorably squandered.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

The greater the crime perpetrated by the leadership, the less likely it is that the people will ever believe their leaders to be capable of perpetrating such an event.

In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals: lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime.

It is the certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage crime.

I had field experience, a vocabulary, and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others.