Most of us continue to believe that those who show utter contempt for human life by committing remorseless, premeditated murder justly forfeit the right to their own life.

[Y]ou wonder why anyone would make the mistake of calling it the Commerce Clause instead of the 'Hey, you -can-do-whatever-you-feel-like Clause?

This is really a pretty good system you have here. What do you call it? "Due process". We're very proud of it.

Appellate review is not a magic wand and we undermine public confidence in the judicial process when we make it look like it is.

The more heavily the government regulates the market, the more competition is impeded.

Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies.

Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights.

My advice would be to whoever is going after judges by name, whether it's the president or anybody else, I think it's a terrible idea. I don't think it's a very smart thing to do a Muslim ban.

I was born under Communism. I know what it's like to live in a system where you can't speak, you have to whisper. Where the state is so pervasive and so intrusive.

If we as a society are willing to take away human life, we should be willing to watch it.

The death penalty is barbaric. And I think we as a society need to come face-to-face with that. If we're not willing to face up to the cruelty, we ought not to be doing it.

I'm not being disrespectful of the medium; it's just not as important as the work that I actually do [books].

If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.

As you sift through this very solid-looking body, you have to go only so far before you end up with a handful of nothing.

Happy the innocent whose equal thoughts are free from anguish as they are from faults.

I tried to laugh early on about ego and pride... I do something great and then I do something really dumb and then I laugh. You'll always be that kid.

If they don't close these [nuclear] reactors down, we'll have civil war in five years.

No oyster in the world tastes as good as a Gulf oyster.

Test everything, try everything, and then believe it, and if you find it for the good of many, give it to all.

A big part of making your own luck is just charging out of the gate every morning.

You’ll never achieve 100 percent if 99 percent is okay.