There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.

Guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant in the criminal trials as we flounder in a morass of artificial rules poorly conceived and often impossible [to apply].

It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to discover a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.

The right of every person "to be let alone" must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.

[No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.

We may be well on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated.

There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.