57 Quotes by Robert H. Jackson

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."[West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)]

But none of these men before you acted in minor parts. Each of them was entrusted with broad discretion and exercised great power. Their responsibility is correspondingly great and may not be shifted to that fictional being, “the State”, which cannot be produced for trial, cannot testify, and cannot be sentenced.

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.

Civil government cannot let any group ride roughshod over others simply because their consciences tell them to do so.

That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.

[A]ny lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to the police under any circumstances.

I cannot subscribe to the perverted reasoning that society may advance and strengthen the rule of law by the expenditure of morally innocent lives but that progress in the law may never be made at the price of morally guilty lives.

Education should be a lifelong process, the formal period serving as a foundation on which life’s structure may rest and rise.

Microbes are doing things we didn’t even know they could do 10 years ago.