The equal protection standard of the constitution has one clear and central meaning - it absolutely prohibits invidious [repugnant] discrimination by government...Under our Constitution, any official action that treats a person differently on account of his race or ethnic origin is inherently [by nature] suspect and presumptively [probably] invalid...Under the Constitution we have, one practice in which government may never engage in the practice of racism - not even "temporarily" and not even as an "experiment."

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

A person's mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not give rise to probable cause to search that person.

In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right to property.

I shall not attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description (of pornography), and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

I think that the Court's task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the ' wall of separation,' a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

It must always be remembered that what the Constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.