Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered.

Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.

Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics.

Capital punishment...treats members of the human race...as objects to be toyed with and discarded.

The genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

We must meet the challenge rather than wish it were not before us.

The calculated killing of a human being by the state involves, by its very nature, an absolute denial of the executed person's humanity. The most vile murder does not, in my view, release the state from constitutional restraint on the destruction of human dignity.