I came into the world a Jew, and although I did not live my life entirely as a Jew, I think it is fitting that I should leave as a Jew. I don't want to turn my back on a great and noble heritage.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.

It is anomalous to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough.

Anybody can decide a question if only a single principle is in controversy.

Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.

The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.

It must take account of what it decrees for today in order that today may not paralyze tomorrow.

The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.

Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.

We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.

To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.

The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.

All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.

The mode by which the inevitable is reached is effort.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

I came into the world a Jew, and although I did not live my life entirely as a Jew, I think it is fitting that I should leave as a Jew. I don't want to turn my back on a great and noble heritage.

It simply is not true that war never settles anything.

There can be no security where there is fear.

Ambiguity lurks in generality and may thus become an instrument of severity.

Ambiguity lurks in generality, and may thus become an instrument of severity.

Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions especially when it is deep.

I know of no title that I deem more honorable than that of Professor of the Harvard Law School.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

You have choices to make about what you do with the rest of your life.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

I can assure you, public service is a stimulating, proud and lively enterprise. It is not just a way of life, it is a way to live fully.

The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

I love children and I love men, but I can't commit to either for the rest of my life.