I see no reason why I should be consciously wrong today because I was unconsciously wrong yesterday.

We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the prices is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.

We are not final because we are infallible, but infallible only because we are final.

When the Supreme Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.

I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.

The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power.