Abortion is inherently different from other medical procedures, because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life.

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

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

Swift justice demands more than just swiftness.

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

The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights.

Fairness is what justice really is.

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

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material but I know it when I see it.

To force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him.

These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.

Become more committed to seeing what's right about you than you are to seeing what's wrong, and soon you'll start to feel a lot different about yourself.

But pain's like water. It finds a way to push through any seal. There's no way to stop it. Sometimes you have to let yourself sink inside of it before you can learn how to swim to the surface.

I am as I am, and that's all there is to it, I can hardly take a pair of scissors to myself, and cut out a different person...

You know that you know... but you don't know that you don't know.

Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

More and more, even with a measure of success, I'm not sure what it is people are seeing when they see a movie I've made.

Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.

Stars burn clear all night till dawn. Do that yourself, and a spring will rise in the dark with water your deepest thirst is for.

The year I was born, 1956, was the peak year for babies being born, and there are more people essentially our age than anybody else. We could crush these new generations if we decided too.