Warren E. Burger Quotes

#1. A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.

Warren E. Burger

#2. [No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.

Warren E. Burger

#3. We may be well on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated.

Warren E. Burger

#4. It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house.

Warren E. Burger

#5. To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.

Warren E. Burger

#6. The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily likes of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week.

Warren E. Burger

#7. Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Warren E. Burger

#8. We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians.

Warren E. Burger

#9. Doctors still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?

Warren E. Burger

#10. Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.

Warren E. Burger

#11. There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.

Warren E. Burger

#12. It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to 'discover' a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.

Warren E. Burger

#13. The president's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts.

Warren E. Burger

#14. However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises.

Warren E. Burger

#15. There may be some incorrigible human beings who cannot be changed except by God's own mercy to that one person.

Warren E. Burger

#16. The right of every person "to be let alone" must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.

Warren E. Burger

#17. The State may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.

Warren E. Burger

#18. We may have lured judges into roaming at large in the constitutional field.

Warren E. Burger

#19. Trials by the adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood.

Warren E. Burger

#20. There can be no assumption that today's majority is 'right' and the Amish and others like them are 'wrong.' A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.

Warren E. Burger

#21. Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values.

Warren E. Burger

#22. The trial of a case is a three-legged stool - a judge and two advocates.

Warren E. Burger

#23. Judges rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times.

Warren E. Burger

#24. Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

Warren E. Burger

#25. The notion that most people want black-robed judges, well-dressed lawyers and fine-paneled courtrooms as the setting to resolve their disputes is not correct. People with problems, like people with pains, want relief, and they want it as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

Warren E. Burger

#26. There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.

Warren E. Burger