“There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.”

Don’t be distracted by emotions like anger, envy, resentment. These just zap energy and waste time.

My rule was I will not answer a question that attempts to project how I will rule in a case that might come before the court.

Yet what greater defeat could we suffer than to come to resemble the forces we oppose in their disrespect for human dignity?

So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.

You can disagree without being disagreeable.

The written argument endures. The oral argument is fleeting.

I just try to do the good job that I have to the best of my ability and I really don’t think about whether I’m inspirational. I just do the best I can.

In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.

I became a lawyer for selfish reasons. I thought I could do a lawyer’s job better than any other.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.

Women’s rights are an essential part of the overall human rights agenda

The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

The new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias.

I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t.

It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one.

Our Constitution was not intended to be used by … any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us.

[The] government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.

Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited by the Constitution?

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.