Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.

I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry.

All discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.

If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have given to the individual, we are indeed at the dawn of a new era; and much that we have deemed vital to our liberties, is a delusion.

Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.

There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.

The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.