Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.

In the political context fair means somebody that will vote for the unions or for the business. It can't mean that in the judicial context or we're in real trouble.

Democracy is something that you must learn each generation. It has to be taught.

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.