Harlan F. Stone Quotes

Thus viewed, law as it exists in the modern community may be conveniently, although perhaps not comprehensively, defined as the sum total of all those rules of conduct for which there is state sanction.

The horse and mule live thirty years
And nothing know of wines and beers;
The goat and sheep at twenty die,
With never a taste of scotch or rye;
The cow drinks water by the ton,
And at eighteen is mostly done.
Without the aid of rum or gin
The dog at fifteen cashes in;
The cat in milk and water soaks,
And then at twelve years old it croaks;
The modest, sober, bone-dry hen
Lays eggs for nogs and dies at ten;
All animals are strictly dry;
They sinless live and swiftly die,
While sinful, gleeful, rum-soaked men
Survive for three score years and ten.
And some of us - a mighty few -
Stay pickled 'till we're ninety-two.

Words, especially those of a constitution, are not to be read with such stultifying narrowness.

History teaches us that there have been but few infringements of personal liberty by the state which have not been justified, as they are here, in the name of righteousness and the public good, and few which have not been directed, as they are now, at politically helpless minorities.

Just what instrumentalities of either a state or the federal government are exempt from taxation by the other cannot be stated in terms of universal application.

Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.

The law itself is on trial in every case as well as the cause before it.

The right to participate in the choice of representatives for Congress includes, as we have said, the right to cast a ballot and to have it counted at the general election whether for the successful candidate or not.

To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest.

There is grim irony in speaking of the freedom of contract of those who, because of their economic necessities, give their service for less than is needful to keep body and soul together.

The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.

The guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them...The very essence of the liberty which they guarantee is the freedom of the individual from compulsion as to what he shall think and what he shall say...

Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.

Wealth, power, the struggle for ephemeral social and political prestige, which so absorb our attention and energy, are but the passing phase of every age; ninety-day wonders which pass from man’s recollection almost before the actors who have striven from them have passed from the stage. ... What is significant in the record of man’s development is none of these. It is rather those forces in society and the lives of those individuals, who have, in each generation, added something to man’s intellectual and moral attainment, that lay hold on the imagination and compel admiration and reverence in each succeeding generation.