Sam Ervin Quotes

#1. Government is contemptuous of true religion when it confiscates the taxes of Caesar to finance the things of God.

Sam Ervin

#2. When religion controls government, political liberty dies; and when government controls religion, religious liberty perishes.

Sam Ervin

#3. A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.

Sam Ervin

#4. I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.

Sam Ervin

#5. Humor makes our heavy burdens light and smoothes the rough spots in our pathways.

Sam Ervin

#6. Religious faith is not a storm cellar to which men and women
can flee for refuge from the storms of life. It is instead, an
inner spiritual strength which enables them to face those
storms with hope and serenity.

Sam Ervin

#7. If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were, in effect, breaking into the home of every citizen.

Sam Ervin

#8. The Supreme Court has made God unconstitutional.

Sam Ervin

#9. There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes or makes it the official duty of a president to have anything to do with criminal activities.

Sam Ervin

#10. Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion.

Sam Ervin

#11. A school prayer amendment would confer upon public school boards a power the First Amendment now denies to Congress and the states, that is, the power to establish religion.

Sam Ervin

#12. If religious freedom is to endure in America, the responsibility for teaching religion to public school children must be left to the homes and churches of our land, where this responsibility rightfully belongs. It must not be assumed by the government through the agency of the public school system.

Sam Ervin

#13. I've always been worried about people who are willing to work for nothing. Sometimes that's all you get from them, nothing.

Sam Ervin

#14. Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.

Sam Ervin

#15. Recalling an old magistrate's words to a young attorney, The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella; But chiefly on the just, because The unjust steals the just's umbrella.

Sam Ervin

#16. The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.

Sam Ervin

#17. I'll have you understand I am running this court, and the law hasn't got a damn thing to do with it!

Sam Ervin

#18. Divine right went out with the American Revolution and doesn't belong to the White House aides. What meat do they eat that makes them grow so great?

Sam Ervin