Mohammad Hidayatullah Quotes

In the most inalienable of such rights a distinction must be made between possession of a right and its exercise. The first is fixed and the latter controlled by justice and necessity.

Liberty of the Individual has to be Fundamental and it has been so declared by the people... To change the Fundamental part of Individual's liberty is a usurpation of constituent functions because they have been placed outside the scope of the power of the constituted Parliament.

The State is at the centre and the society surrounds it. Disturbances of society go in a broad spectrum from more disturbance of the serenity of life to jeopardy of the State. The acts become graver (and graver) as we journey from the peripheral of the largest circle towards the centre. In this journey we travel first through public tranquility, then through public order and lastly to the security of the State.

Law and order represents the largest circle within which is the next circle representing public order and the smallest circle represents security of State. It is then easy to see that an Act may affect law and order but not public order, just as an act may affect public order but not security of the State.

The artistic appeal or presentation of an episode robs it of its vulgarity and harm...

Where obscenity and art are mixed art must be so preponderating as to throw the obscenity into shadow.

The cherished right on which our democracy rests is meant for the expression of free opinions to change political or social conditions or for the advancement of human knowledge.

Please do not worry, I never read anything which you write.

...we need not shed tears over what has happened and we can look forward – not be forward looking, but look forward – to an era which will be as good as the one which has gone before.

I was never in the mood of Lord Macaulay who said – I shall retire early I am very tired– I know that life meant that one must continue to occupy his time with work.

The Judge should certainly consider what is happening around him, but his interpretation should strictly be judicial.

This was an attempt of not creating 'forward looking judges' but the 'judges looking forward' to the plumes of the office of Chief Justice.