Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.

In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.

Conservative political opinion in America cleaves to the tradition of the judge as passive interpreter, believing that his absolute loyalty to authoritative law is the price of his immunity from political pressure and of the security of his tenure.

If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.

A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.

The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country.

There is something monstrous in commands couched in invented and unfamiliar language; an alien master is the worst of all. The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.