Antonin Scalia famous quotes

Having had the good fortune to serve beside her on both courts, I can attest that her opinions are always thoroughly considered, always carefully crafted and almost always correct (which is to say we sometimes disagree). That much is apparent for all to see. What only her colleagues know is that her suggestions improve the opinions the rest of us write, and that she is a source of collegiality and good judgment in all our work.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Writing #Suggestions #Opinion

If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?
-- Antonin Scalia

#Feelings #Moral #Murder

When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?
-- Antonin Scalia

#Couple #Gay #Amendments

The body of scientific evidence supporting creation science is as strong as that supporting evolution. In fact, it may be stronger.... The evidence for evolution is far less compelling than we have been led to believe. Evolution is not a scientific fact, since it cannot actually be observed in a laboratory. Rather, evolution is merely a scientific theory or guess.... It is a very bad guess at that. The scientific problems with evolution are so serious that it could accurately be termed a myth.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Strong #Believe #Religion

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

#Pain #Causes #Execution

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Innocence #Reason #Factual

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Mean #Rights #Liberty

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

#Believe #Gun #Hands

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

#Religious #Atheist #Practice

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?
-- Antonin Scalia

#Mean #Interpretation #Really Mean

I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Silly #Sake #Conservative

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

#Teaching #Character #Years

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

#Mean #Scary #Groups

[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

#Scary #Done #Should

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

#Easter #Morning #Scary

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

#Christian #Taken #Views

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

#Believe #Scary #Matter

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

#Christian #Scary #World

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

#America #Scary #Looks

The wise do not investigate such silliness.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Wise #Scary #Silliness

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

#Ideas #Scary #Faithful

If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Judging #Faithful #Facts

Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Rocks #Psychology #Decorating

Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual. ...To pursue the concept of racial entitlement - even for the most admirable and benign of purposes - is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Eye #Thinking #Race

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

#Christian #Order #Essentials

I am glad that I am not raising kids today. And I’m rather pessimistic that my grandchildren will enjoy the great society that I’ve enjoyed in my lifetime. I really think it’s coarsened. It’s coarsened in so many ways. One of the things that upsets me about modern society is the coarseness of manners. You can’t go to a movie — or watch a television show for that matter — without hearing the constant use of the F-word — including, you know, ladies using it. People that I know don’t talk like that!
-- Antonin Scalia

#Kids #Thinking #Grandchildren

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

#Gun #Rights #People

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

#Children #Perfect #Big Families

Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?
-- Antonin Scalia

#World #Nine #Lawyer

A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Law #Economic #Folly

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

#Order #Liberty #Realization

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

#Thinking #Ideas #Abortion

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

#Sex #Hippie #Rights

The mere possession of monopoly power, and the concomitant charging of monopoly prices, is not only not unlawful, it is an important element of the free-market system. The opportunity to charge monopoly prices - at least for a short period - is what attracts 'business acumen' in the first place; it induces risk taking that produces innovation and economic growth.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Opportunity #Competition #Risk

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

#Children #Men #Rights

It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Constitution #Illusion #Difficult

In the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Eye #Race #Government

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

#People #Useless #Looks

A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Turntables #Bottom

A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Purpose #Machines #Basements

Why can't the state accede to the public's wishes?
-- Antonin Scalia

#Wish #States

Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change
-- Antonin Scalia

You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations... until they were all litigated out.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Regulation #Different #States

Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis--that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Military #War #Thinking

People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Exercise #Rights #People

Justice White's conclusion is perhaps correct, if one assumes that the task of a court of law is to plumb the intent of the particular Congress that enacted a particular provision. That methodology is not mine nor, I think, the one that courts have traditionally followed. It is our task, as I see it, not to enter the minds of the Members of Congress - who need have nothing in mind in order for their votes to be both lawful and effective - but rather to give fair and reasonable meaning to the text of the United States Code, adopted by various Congresses at various times.
-- Antonin Scalia

#Thinking #Order #Law