Rehnquist Quotes

#1. Rehnquist was just reflecting his shifting role, from outsider to the institutional embodiment of the Court.

Jeffrey Toobin

#2. Bill Rehnquist makes Barry Goldwater look like a liberal.

John Dean

#3. Justice Rehnquist was friendly and unpretentious. He wore scuffed Hush Puppy shoes. That was my first lesson. Clothes do not make the man. The Justice sported long sideburns and Buddy Holly glasses long after they were fashionable. And he wore loud ties that I am confident were never fashionable.

John Roberts

#4. The death of chief justice Rehnquist and the president's nomination of John Roberts raises the stakes for the court and the American people exponentially.

Ralph G. Neas

#5. There's a lot of the Midwest and the West in Justice Rehnquist's approach to constitutional law. And by that I mean a recognition that people know pretty well how to govern themselves, that government that is closest to the people is apt to be more responsive to their legitimate concerns and needs.

John Roberts

#6. There's no question that Roberts will vote like William Rehnquist ... If he swings, it will be from right to far right.

Jonathan Turley

#7. I noted too that I had on many occasions spoken on the subject of the pollution of the spirit (or so I told them), and how the spirit should not be polluted, and how I personally looked askance at, for instance, a latte.

Rick Moody

#8. Conservatives are those who worship dead radicals.

William Rehnquist

#9. If you could say of any one individual that the court as an institution is the length and shadow of that individual, surely it would be John Marshall.

William Rehnquist

#10. The FBI continues to work with tribes through the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 to help tribal governments better address the unique public safety challenges and disproportionately high rates of violence and victimization in many tribal communities.

James Comey

#11. He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.

Paul Tillich

#12. In any civilized society the most important task is achieving a proper balance between freedom and order. In wartime, reason and history both suggest that this balance shifts in favor ... of the government's ability to deal with conditions that threaten the national well-being.

William Rehnquist

#13. Reading aloud and talking about what we're reading sharpens children's brains. It helps develop their ability to concentrate at length, to solve problems logically, and to express themselves more easily and clearly.

Mem Fox

#14. [I]f we assume a liberty interest but nevertheless say that, even assuming a liberty interest, a state can prohibit it entirely, that would be rather a conundrum.

William Rehnquist

#15. Pregnancy is of course confined to women, but it is in other ways significantly different from the typical covered disease or disability

William Rehnquist

#16. Perhaps you should say there should be mandatory retirement even of members of the court, members of the federal judiciary. I'm sure there can be questions about whether one does as good work when you get into your - you know, I'm 67.

William Rehnquist

#17. She raised her eyes from the table and put the question to him as if the thought had just struck her, but it had obviously not just struck her.

Haruki Murakami

#18. The 'wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.

William Rehnquist

#19. Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them.

Michel De Montaigne

#20. Somewhere "out there," beyond the walls of the courthouse, run currents and tides of public opinion which lap at the courtroom door.

William Rehnquist

#21. It is always possible for the court to overreach its proper bounds and perhaps declare a lot of laws unconstitutional and frustrate the will of the majority in a way that it ought not be frustrated.

William Rehnquist

#22. I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues, but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be re-affirmed,

William Rehnquist

#23. We start with first principles. The Constitution creates a Federal Government of enumerated powers.

William Rehnquist

#24. Goodness knows the Republican electorate is a pretty narrow slice of the population.

David Price

#25. The Equal Rights Amendment would "turn holy wedlock into holy deadlock."

William Rehnquist

#26. The Constitution requires that Congress treat similarly situated persons similarly, not that it engages in gestures of superficial equality.

William Rehnquist

#27. We're the culture that cried wolf.

Chuck Palahniuk

#28. Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.

Tahir Shah