Scalia's Quotes

#1. I'm arguing for progressive positions on behalf of a progressive administration in front of a court who, before Justice [Antonin] Scalia's death, had a conservative majority that was quite conservative, frankly.

Donald Verrilli Jr.

#2. Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited under the Constitution?

Antonin Scalia

#3. I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion.

Antonin Scalia

#4. When Scalia dissents, he pours gasoline on the majority, lights a match, and stomps on the ashes.

Irin Carmon

#5. I remember fear and I remember the potential of nuclear war.

Jack Scalia

#6. Rather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress to decide what to do about the Act's limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges.

Antonin Scalia

#7. Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.

Antonin Scalia

#8. To be honest about it, that is the view of Christians taken by modern society. Surely those who adhere to all or most of these traditional Christian beliefs are to be regarded as simpleminded.

Antonin Scalia

#9. Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.

Antonin Scalia

#10. The death penalty? Give me a break. It's easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.

Antonin Scalia

#11. There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.

Antonin Scalia

#12. For in order for capitalism to work
in order for it to produce a good and a stable society
the traditional Christian virtues are essential.

Antonin Scalia

#13. But I'm not pro death penalty. I - I'm just anti the notion that it is not a matter for democratic choice, that it has been taken away from the democratic choice of the people by a provision of the Constitution.

Antonin Scalia

#14. Why can't the state accede to the public's wishes?

Antonin Scalia

#15. The wise do not investigate such silliness.

Antonin Scalia

#16. Justice Scalia is predictable. He can be counted on to come down with a conservative opinion, and generally, to bring Justice Clarence Thomas with him.

F. Lee Bailey

#17. There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.

Antonin Scalia

#18. If you are sentenced to torture for a crime, yes, that is a cruel punishment. But the mere fact that somebody is tortured is - is unlawful under - under our statutes, but the Constitution happens not to address it, just as it does not address a lot of other horrible things.

Antonin Scalia

#19. The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the unalienable rights with which the Declaration of Independence proclaims all men [and women] are endowed by their creator.

Antonin Scalia

#20. Scalia would bring the spoils of a recent hunting trip. "Scalia kills it and Marty cooks it," said guest and former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson in 2007. "I never heard them talk about anything political or ideological, because there would be no point,

Irin Carmon

#21. Campaign promises are - by long democratic tradition - the least binding form of human commitment.

Antonin Scalia

#22. In the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American.

Antonin Scalia

#23. Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.

Antonin Scalia

#24. The purpose of the Federalist Society was to bring together young people who had this skepticism about what they were being taught and to let them know that there were others who shared this skepticism.

Antonin Scalia

#25. In a surprising unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court ruled the police cannot search what is on your phone without a warrant. Court observers said a unanimous decision from this court was slightly less likely than Scalia winning the annual Supreme Court wet robe contest.

Peter Sagal

#26. As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to 'do what the people want,' instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.

Antonin Scalia

#27. This is so absurd that it has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated.

Antonin Scalia

#28. It's a long, uphill fight to get back to original orthodoxy. We have two 'originalists' on the Supreme Court. That's something.

Antonin Scalia

#29. Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.

Antonin Scalia

#30. Scalia said the court had pretty much signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, adding: Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means.

Antonin Scalia

#31. What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?

Antonin Scalia

#32. It would also be strange to find in the midst of a catalog of the rights of individuals a provision securing to the states the right to maintain a designated "Militia." Dispassionate scholarship suggests quite strongly that the right of the people to keep and bear arms meant just that.

Antonin Scalia

#33. This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent.

Antonin Scalia

#34. The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.

Antonin Scalia

#35. One can be sophisticated and believe in God. Reason and intellect are not to be laid aside where matters of religion are concerned.

Antonin Scalia

#36. [If critics of the Pledge of Allegiance persuaded the public it should be changed] then we could eliminate under God from the Pledge of Allegiance, that could be democratically done.

Antonin Scalia

#37. I was raised with those principals and values and ethics that came out of the men and women that served. But this generation doesn't quite know; they haven't been tested.

Jack Scalia

#38. There's an assault on human sexuality, as Judge Scalia said, they've taken sides in the culture war and on top of that if we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view and vote those things into law.

Pat Robertson

#39. My family has served the country in almost every major war since the Civil War.

Jack Scalia

#40. By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.

Antonin Scalia

#41. Bear in mind that brains and learning, like muscle and physical skill, are articles of commerce. They are bought and sold. You can hire them by the year or by the hour. The only thing in the world not for sale is character.

Antonin Scalia

#42. I do accept that, with - with respect to those vague terms in the Constitution such as equal protection of the laws, due process of law, cruel and unusual punishments. I fully accept that those things have to apply to new phenomena that didn't exist at the time.

Antonin Scalia

#43. Burning the flag is a form of expression. Speech doesn't just mean written words or oral words. It could be semaphore. And burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea - I hate the government, the government is unjust, whatever.

Antonin Scalia

#44. A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement.

Antonin Scalia

#45. This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?

Antonin Scalia

#46. You gotta take care of the people that are part of the foundation. If you don't, it crumbles.

Jack Scalia

#47. Originalism is sort of subspecies of textualism. Textualism means you are governed by the text. That's the only thing that is relevant to your decision, not whether the outcome is desirable, not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute.

Antonin Scalia

#48. The Court today completes the process of converting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for often will.

Antonin Scalia

#49. A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.

Antonin Scalia

#50. The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.

Antonin Scalia

#51. I try to be an honest originalist! I will take the bitter with the sweet!

Antonin Scalia

#52. To allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

Antonin Scalia

#53. My view is regardless of whether you think prohibiting abortion is good or whether you think prohibiting abortion is bad, regardless of how you come out on that, my only point is the Constitution does not say anything about it. It leaves it up to democratic choice.

Antonin Scalia

#54. A written constitution is needed to protect values AGAINST prevailing wisdom.

Antonin Scalia

#55. Because if you have a strong foundation like we have, then you can build or rebuild anything on it. But if you've got a weak foundation you can't build anything.

Jack Scalia

#56. Now that the Court has declared money to be speech, I say we replace the current Court with some Ben Franklins, Thomas Jeffersons, George Washingtons, a couple of Susan B. Anthony's, Roosevelts, Hamiltons, a Sacajawea or two, and an Abe Lincoln to cover Scalia in full.

Elayne Boosler

#57. People look at rights as if they were muscles - the more you exercise them, the better they get.

Antonin Scalia

#58. The attitude of people associating guns with nothing but crime, that is what has to be changed. I grew up at a time when people were not afraid of people with firearms.

Antonin Scalia

#59. Ever so subtly, without even alluding to the last obstacles preserved by earlier opinions that we now push out of our path, we effectively replace the goal of a discrimination-free society with the quite imcompatible goal of proportionate representation by race and by sex in the workplace.

Antonin Scalia

#60. When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?

Antonin Scalia

#61. Classroom Activities
1. Using felt and yarn, make a hand puppet of Clarence Thomas. Ta-da! You're Antonin Scalia!

Jon Stewart

#62. A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.

Antonin Scalia

#63. The court's job is to uphold the Constitution and you don't call that off in times of crisis. Would the framers have allowed this practice?

Antonin Scalia

#64. He [Louis Brandeis] would have not had any patience with that great debate which you're right to kind of signal between Justice Scalia and Justice Alito about do you need a physical trespass into the home or onto the carriage in order to trigger the values of the Fourth Amendment.

Jeffrey Rosen

#65. It's absolutely clear that whatever cruel and unusual punishments may - may mean with regard to future things, such as death by injection or the electric chair, it's clear that - that the death penalty, in and of itself, is not considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Antonin Scalia

#66. There's a greatness in this country many of the kids today don't know.

Jack Scalia

#67. The virtue of a democratic system with a [constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly.

Antonin Scalia

#68. I am something of a contrarian, I suppose. I feel less comfortable when everybody agrees with me. I say, 'I better reexamine my position!' I probably believe that the worst opinions in my court have been unanimous. Because there's nobody on the other side pointing out all the flaws.

Antonin Scalia

#69. A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.

Antonin Scalia

#70. It is a Constitution that morphs while you look at it like Plasticman ... That is contrary to our whole tradition, to in God we trust on the coins, to Thanksgiving proclamations, to (Congressional) chaplains, to tax exemption for places of worship, which has always existed in America.

Antonin Scalia

#71. Devout Christians are destined to be regarded as fools in modern society. We are fools for Christ's sake. We must pray for courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world.

Antonin Scalia

#72. On a court full of great writers, I shouldn't say full of - there have been some bad writers on the court over the years. We've just lost a great writer in Antonin Scalia.

Dahlia Lithwick

#73. But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of our cities.

Antonin Scalia

#74. Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia should be commended for acknowledging that his views are so strong that - should the Pledge case reach the Supreme Court - he wouldn't be able to maintain the requisite impartiality.

Michael Newdow

#75. In a big family the first child is kind of like the first pancake. If it's not perfect, that's okay, there are a lot more coming along.

Antonin Scalia

#76. If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?

Antonin Scalia

#77. With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our nation's historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.

Antonin Scalia

#78. God is most high. To choose God, his light, his way his truth (all Christ), means everything flows from the highest point. To choose something lesser is to compel your life to flow from a lesser rise - a hill, rather than a mountain.

Elizabeth Scalia

#79. To many Americans, everything from the Easter morning to the Ascension had to be made up by the groveling enthusiasts as part of their plan to get themselves martyred.

Antonin Scalia

#80. Tyrannies have long lists of rights. What they do not have is structural restraints on the power of government.

Antonin Scalia

#81. I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better.

Antonin Scalia

#82. [The Freedom of Information Act is] the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the Sistine Chapel of Cost-Benefit Analysis Ignored.

Antonin Scalia

#83. But this country is a great country and will always rebound.

Jack Scalia

#84. Our firefighters are our last line of defense, baby.

Jack Scalia

#85. Originalism says that when you consult the text, you give it the meaning it had when it was adopted, not some later modern meaning.

Antonin Scalia

#86. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

Antonin Scalia

#87. Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.

Antonin Scalia

#88. God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools ... and He has not been disappointed.

Antonin Scalia

#89. On this day, when we're celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage - to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it's a good idea.

Antonin Scalia

#90. Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is "established by the State".

Antonin Scalia

#91. It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction.

Antonin Scalia

#92. Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry
out a death sentence properly reached.

Antonin Scalia

#93. It's not up to the courts to invent new minorities that get special protections.

Antonin Scalia

#94. And what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional. A lot of stuff that's stupid is not unconstitutional.

Antonin Scalia

#95. Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?

Antonin Scalia

#96. If we're picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a 'new' Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless.

Antonin Scalia

#97. The government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.

Antonin Scalia

#98. In 1905, the Supreme Court of the United States applied the rule to the country's founding document: The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now.

Antonin Scalia

#99. If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That's flexibility.

Antonin Scalia

#100. [International law] doesn't show what the Constitution originally meant, and it doesn't show what is fundamentally important to Americans today. It shows what's fundamentally important to somebody else today.

Antonin Scalia