Antonin Scalia Quote

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'...
ANTONIN SCALIA

The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of e...
ANTONIN SCALIA

What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this C...
ANTONIN SCALIA

The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead, or as I prefer to call it, endu...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited... It is not a right to keep and carry...
ANTONIN SCALIA

There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of America's death penalty, as s...
ANTONIN SCALIA

It's absolutely clear that whatever cruel and unusual punishments may - may mean with regard to ...
ANTONIN SCALIA

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

The Court today completes the process of converting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from a...
ANTONIN SCALIA

I spent my junior year in Switzerland. On the way back home, I spent some time in England, and I rem...
ANTONIN SCALIA

By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority ar...
ANTONIN SCALIA

As a general rule, I do not think it appropriate for judges to heap either praise or censure upon a ...
ANTONIN SCALIA

is to give live-birth abortion free rein.
ANTONIN SCALIA

a serious inability of our political branches to conduct international affairs.
ANTONIN SCALIA

find itself unable to resolve the significant legal issue presented by the case.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached
ANTONIN SCALIA

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

If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. You th...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Maybe he wanted to buy a new crutch for Tiny Tim, ... Please, counselor, don't read all these tender...
ANTONIN SCALIA

The line between protected pornography and unprotected obscenity lies between appealing to a good he...
ANTONIN SCALIA

[The Freedom of Information Act is] the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the...
ANTONIN SCALIA

The Court today completes the process of converting [Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] from...
ANTONIN SCALIA

I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And i...
ANTONIN SCALIA

In a big family the first child is kind of like the first pancake. If it's not perfect, that'...
ANTONIN SCALIA

But I'm not pro death penalty. I - I'm just anti the notion that it is not a matter for demo...
ANTONIN SCALIA

The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment - in deterre...
ANTONIN SCALIA

There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of...
ANTONIN SCALIA

A good, hard-hitting dissent keeps you honest.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Originalism is sort of subspecies of textualism. Textualism means you are governed by the text. That...
ANTONIN SCALIA

I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It's dead, dead, dead. But I'v...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy...
ANTONIN SCALIA

I think I'm a pretty nice fella.
ANTONIN SCALIA

I do accept that, with - with respect to those vague terms in the Constitution such as equal protect...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Being a good person begins with being a wise person. Then, when you follow your conscience, will you...
ANTONIN SCALIA

If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that yo...
ANTONIN SCALIA

It seems to be an odd proposition,
ANTONIN SCALIA

If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. You th...
ANTONIN SCALIA

With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them - with each d...
ANTONIN SCALIA

And what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stup...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Some people are inherently likeable. If you're not - work on it. It may even improve your social...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Like other human institutions, courts and juries are not perfect. One cannot have a system of crimin...
ANTONIN SCALIA

I would think the normal assumption is if one person wants that search excluded, that search is excl...
ANTONIN SCALIA

If there's anything you absolutely hate, why, it must be unconstitutional. Or, if there's an...
ANTONIN SCALIA

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

I watched 'The Sopranos,' I saw a couple of episodes of 'Mad Men.' I loved 'Sein...
ANTONIN SCALIA

that reliability be assessed in a particular manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination...
ANTONIN SCALIA

The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to...
ANTONIN SCALIA

You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations ... until they were all litigated...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Because values change, legislatures abolish the death penalty, permit same-sex marriage if they want...
ANTONIN SCALIA

I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Does it stop being a quota because it is somewhere between eight and 12 percent, but it is a quota i...
ANTONIN SCALIA

The first instinct of power is the retention of power, and under a Constitution that requires period...
ANTONIN SCALIA

I am questioning the propriety – indeed, the sanity – of having a value-laden decision such as t...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.
ANTONIN SCALIA

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd l...
ANTONIN SCALIA

If there was anybody that has been sort of the social glue of the court, it's been Sandra and I will...
ANTONIN SCALIA

is locked in the heart of the president.
ANTONIN SCALIA

I don't know. I wouldn't want to go through it today, I'll tell you that much.
ANTONIN SCALIA

When dinner is over, it won't be her bones on the table.
ANTONIN SCALIA

They don't have any separate harm.
ANTONIN SCALIA

I do not believe my impartiality can reasonably be questioned,
ANTONIN SCALIA

Let the cancer patients suffer.
ANTONIN SCALIA

I cannot imagine any responsible citizen would have objected to giving the name,
ANTONIN SCALIA

I assure you, I have no agenda.
ANTONIN SCALIA

I don't like interjecting us into a battle between the two political branches,
ANTONIN SCALIA

The LSC subsidy neither prevents anyone from speaking nor coerces anyone to change speech,
ANTONIN SCALIA

Abortion is off the democratic stage. Prohibiting it is unconstitutional, now and forever, coast to ...
ANTONIN SCALIA

A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement.
ANTONIN SCALIA

over my dead body.
ANTONIN SCALIA

You can make an exception without the sky falling,
ANTONIN SCALIA

What will happen is, for every one person who sees it on C-SPAN gavel to gavel -- so that they can r...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Does the deck seem stacked against those who oppose abortion? ... You bet.
ANTONIN SCALIA

If one is to say as the court does today that ALL executions of the mentally retarded are so morally...
ANTONIN SCALIA

the Constitution's refusal to 'deny or disparage' other rights is far removed from affirming any one...
ANTONIN SCALIA

They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be ...
ANTONIN SCALIA

In a big family the first child is kind of like the first pancake. If it's not perfect, that's okay,...
ANTONIN SCALIA

The First Amendment has not repealed the ancient rule of life, that he who pays the piper calls the ...
ANTONIN SCALIA

A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
ANTONIN SCALIA

We have laws against torture. The Constitution says nothing whatever about torture. It speaks of pun...
ANTONIN SCALIA

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

If we're picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a 'new' Const...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress, if it wants to use it. It c...
ANTONIN SCALIA

If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as st...
ANTONIN SCALIA

If I had to choose, I would always take the less dynamic, indeed even the lazy person who knows what...
ANTONIN SCALIA

I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Burning the flag is a form of expression. Speech doesn't just mean written words or oral words. ...
ANTONIN SCALIA

Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.
ANTONIN SCALIA

A man who has made no enemies is probably not a very good man.
ANTONIN SCALIA

My family has served the country in almost every major war since the Civil War.
JACK SCALIA

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

I was raised with those principals and values and ethics that came out of the men and women that ser...
JACK SCALIA

I remember fear and I remember the potential of nuclear war.
JACK SCALIA

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

But this country is a great country and will always rebound.
JACK SCALIA

Because if you have a strong foundation like we have, then you can build or rebuild anything on it. ...
JACK SCALIA

Our firefighters are our last line of defense, baby.
JACK SCALIA

The reward of a work is to have produced it; the reward of effort is to have grown by it.
ANTONIN SERTILLANGES

Mozart is sweet sunshine.
ANTONIN DVORAK

When we speak the word life, it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from i...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, yo...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

The stage is a concrete physical place which asks to be filled, and to be given its own concrete lan...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Theater of cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

However fiercely opposed one may be to the present order, an old respect for the idea of order itsel...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

With society and its public, there is no longer any other language than that of bombs, barricades, a...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find t...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about dif...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted s...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined ETERNA...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Ah! How neatly tied, in these people, is the umbilical cord of morality! Since they left their mothe...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of fol...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

It is almost impossible to be a doctor and an honest man, but it is obscenely impossible to be a psy...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know t...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of yo...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

We do not die because we have to die; we die because one day, and not so long ago, our consciousness...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything -- gestures, sounds, words, screams, ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Where there is a stink of shit there is a smell of being
ANTONIN ARTAUD

All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this-...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

We must beware of yielding to the pressure of a spirit of cowardly conformity which proclaims itself...
ANTONIN SERTILLANGES

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

When we speak the word ''life',' it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it fr...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Destroy yourselves, you who are desperate, and you who are tortured in body and soul, abandon all ho...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

We must wash literature off ourselves. We want to be men above all, to be human.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Those who live, live off the dead.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand oth...
ANTONIN SERTILLANGES

I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Don't tire yourself more than need be, even at the price of founding a culture on the fatigue of you...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

When we speak the word 'life,' it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

The man who is too isolated grows timid, abstracted, a little odd: He stumbles along amid realities ...
ANTONIN SERTILLANGES

[defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, ...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Don't tire yourself more than need be, even at the price of founding a culture on the fatigue of...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

There is in every madman
a misunderstood genius
whose idea
shining in his head
f...
ANTONIN ARTAUD

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.

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Antonin Scalia

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

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