Charles Evans Hughes Quotes

#1. We [the Government] are here not as masters but as servants, we are not here to glory in power, but to attest our loyalty to the commands and restrictions laid down by our sovereign, the people of the United States, in whose name and by whose will we exercise our brief authority.

Charles Evans Hughes

#2. When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.

Charles Evans Hughes

#3. War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.

Charles Evans Hughes

#4. The first lesson in civics is that efficient government begins at home.

Charles Evans Hughes

#5. Dissents are appeals to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of another day.

Charles Evans Hughes

#6. It is the essence of the institutions of liberty that it be recognized that guilt is personal and cannot be attributed to the holding of opinions or to mere intent in the absence of overt acts.

Charles Evans Hughes

#7. While democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.

Charles Evans Hughes

#8. I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not breakdown from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.

Charles Evans Hughes

#9. Men do not die from overwork. They die from dissipation and worry.

Charles Evans Hughes

#10. The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope.

Charles Evans Hughes

#11. The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our history abundantly attest.

Charles Evans Hughes

#12. In a number of cases dissenting opinions have in time become the law.

Charles Evans Hughes

#13. The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.

Charles Evans Hughes

#14. Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation.

Charles Evans Hughes

#15. When we deal with questions relating to principles of law and their applications, we do not suddenly rise into a stratosphere of icy certainty.

Charles Evans Hughes

#16. The United States is the greatest law factory the world has ever known.

Charles Evans Hughes

#17. A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.

Charles Evans Hughes

#18. We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our property and our liberty and our property under the Constitution.

Charles Evans Hughes

#19. The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal will take care of themselves. Look after the courts of the poor, who stand most in need of justice. The security of the republic will be found in the treatment of the poor and the ignorant. In indifference to their misery and helplessness lies disaster.

Charles Evans Hughes

#20. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses.

Charles Evans Hughes

#21. Each man begins with his own world to conquer, and his education is the measure of his conquest.

Charles Evans Hughes