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.

Without a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light.

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.

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

The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children.

Freedom of speech and of the press are essential to the enlightenment of a free people and in restraining those who wield power.