It doesn't help to fight crime to put people in prison who are innocent.

Independence doesn't mean you decide the way you want.

To threaten the institution is to threaten fair administration of justice and protection of liberty.

But once the person is selected, at that point that person is independent.

I thought that that was an effort to inject a popular element, a democratic element into the selection of a person who, once he is selected and confirmed, is beyond electoral control.

And the problem is once you get into this campaign business and begin to have a lot of money, then the person on the bench begins to think - what's going to happen if I decide the case this way or that way?

Judges are appointed often through the political process.

It doesn't help to fight crime to put people in prison who are innocent.

Independence means you decide according to the law and the facts.

I mean those people who are interested in good government will certainly contribute in order to make certain there's some counter-balance to those whose interests in good government is less.

I think it shows that if you have one group of people doing it, you'll get another group of people doing it.

And in that confirmation process, I sat for 17 hours in front of a senate judiciary committee.

Well, just that there would be somebody in the office and the voters - it was more or less an understanding in the entire community, as long as that person was doing a good job on the merits, nobody was going to run against him.

We can speak about the institution, but ultimately the bar is the group that both is in touch with the public on the one hand and understands the judicial institution on the other.

At least there's a political input, but when you put on the robe, at that point the politics is over.

Ultimately, the question of campaign contributions will be decided by the public.

You will read in the newspaper more often about federal courts, but the law that affects people, the trials that affect human beings are by and large in the state courts.

Nobody wants a judge to be subject to the political whim of the moment.

Every citizen has to figure out what kind of government he or she wants.

There are loads of countries that have nice written constitutions like ours. But there aren't loads of countries where they're followed.

It's important to every American that the law protect his or her basic liberty.

You can have many different selection systems, but the bottom line has to be a system that, once the judge takes office that judge will feel that he or she is to decide the case without reference to the popular thing or the popular will of the moment.

People have to be educated and they have to stick to it. If people lose that respect, an awful lot is lost.

We are selected, but I grew up in California and in San Francisco and there was a system of electing judges.

What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party.

The seasons come up undisturbed by crime and war.

Examples one finds in the philosophical literature are somebody who's seen the trial of a child of theirs, where they're being proved guilty of some crime that would drive the parent into a depression, maybe a suicidal depression.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

Dullness is the only crime for which an editor ought to be hung.

Success in crime always invites to worse deeds.

Crime, to the man of the forties, was an alien monstrous terror.

Rather let the crime of the guilty go unpunished than condemn the innocent.

I will never have a drink and get behind the wheel of a car. It's not illegal to drink and drive, but there becomes a certain point where it does become a crime.

I think there's a lot of naivete and hubris within our mix of personalities. That's probably our worst crime. I keep wondering what a "mature" record means.

The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.

A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all.

The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.

I didn't break into comics to write fairytales or crime comics.

Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.

Next to the love of God, the love of country is the best preventive of crime.

The fact that a player is very short of time is, to my mind, as little to be considered an excuse as, for instance, the statement of the law-breaker that he was drunk at the time he committed the crime.

We are not supposed to go out and kill all those we suspect to have committed a crime.

The worst crime is faking it.

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.

It means working harder to do the research but I don't really mind - I don't think I have what it takes to chase criminals through back alleys and wade through blood at crime scenes.

Since 1994, unemployment rates are lower. Median household income is higher. A greater percentage of Americans are graduating from college. Home ownership rates are higher. And the violent crime rate has decreased.

The head never rules the heart but just becomes its partner in crime.