Hugo Black quotes

A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion.
-- Hugo Black

#Government #Religion #Unions

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.
-- Hugo Black

#Peace #War #Government

An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.
-- Hugo Black

#Guarantees #Firsts #Civil Rights

The layman's constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that which he doesn't like is unconstitutional.
-- Hugo Black

#Views #Society #Likes

When I was 40, my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn't play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again.
-- Hugo Black

#Sports #Men #Doctors

The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.
-- Hugo Black

#Responsibility #Government #People

The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.
-- Hugo Black

#Friendship #Enemy #Revolution

The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.
-- Hugo Black

#Self #Purpose #Firsts

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press
-- Hugo Black

#Government #Criticism #Sanctuary

The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach. [Progressive]
-- Hugo Black

#Religious #Wall #Liberty

In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.
-- Hugo Black

#New York #Father #Views

I cannot agree with those who think of the Bill of Rights as an 18th century straitjacket, unsuited for this age...The evils it guards against are not only old, they are with us now, they exist today.
-- Hugo Black

#Thinking #Gun #Rights

Loyalty must arise spontaneously from the hearts of people who love their country and respect their government.
-- Hugo Black

#Loyalty #Country #Heart

We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person 'to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.' Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against nonbelievers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.
-- Hugo Black

#Law #Government #Religion

Words uttered under coercion are proof of loyalty to nothing but self-interest. Love of country must spring from willing hearts and free minds.
-- Hugo Black

#Loyalty #Country #Spring

Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.
-- Hugo Black

#Patriotic #Wind #Judging

From the very beginning, our state and national constitutions and laws have laid great emphasis on procedural and substantive safeguards designed to assure fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law. This noble ideal cannot be realized if the poor man charged with crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist him.
-- Hugo Black

#Men #Law #Justice

When the power, prestige, and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain.
-- Hugo Black

#Religious #Government #Support

The Establishment Clause . . . stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders . . . that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its 'unhallowed perversion' by a civil magistrate.
-- Hugo Black

#Expression #Church #Principles

[H]istory showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith.
-- Hugo Black

#Government #People #Support

Compelling a man by law to pay his money to elect candidates or advocate law or doctrines he is against differs only in degree, if at all, from compelling him by law to speak for a candidate, a party, or a cause he is against. The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the people of this country free to think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.
-- Hugo Black

#Country #Party #Writing

The interest of the people lies in being able to join organizations, advocate causes, and make political "mistakes" without being subjected to governmental penalties.
-- Hugo Black

#Mistake #Lying #Organization

The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the people of this country free to think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.
-- Hugo Black

#Country #Writing #Thinking

That Amendment requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and nonbelievers; it does not require the state to be their adversary. State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them.
-- Hugo Black

#Religious #Groups #Doe

The First Amendment provides the only kind of security system that can preserve a free government - one that leaves the way wide open for people to favor, discuss, advocate, or incite causes and doctrines however obnoxious and antagonistic such views may be to the rest of us.
-- Hugo Black

#Government #Views #People

The First Amendment's language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.
-- Hugo Black

#Mean #Simple #Law

Citizenship is no light trifle to be jeopardized any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of one of its general or implied grants of power.
-- Hugo Black

#Light #Names #Citizenship

The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security ... .
-- Hugo Black

#Military #Real #Government

The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs.
-- Hugo Black

#Country #Government #Hatred

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
-- Hugo Black

#Responsibility #Hype #Government

The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to bare the secrets of government and inform the people.
-- Hugo Black

#Father #Government #People

No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.
-- Hugo Black

#Religious #Practice #Support

The United States has a system of taxation by confession
-- Hugo Black

#United States #Taxation #Confession

The lesson which wars and depressions have taught is that if we want peace, prosperity and happiness at home we must help to establish them abroad.
-- Hugo Black

#Peace #War #Home

[I]t is true that [the provisions of the Bill of Rights] were designed to meet ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from century to century whenever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense of the many.
-- Hugo Black

#Rights #Evil #Bills

No higher duty, or more solemn responsibility, rests upon this Court than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution-of whatever race, creed or persuasion.
-- Hugo Black

#Responsibility #Law #Race

Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they have, or the views they express, or the words they speak or write.
-- Hugo Black

#Freedom #Mean #Writing

There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.
-- Hugo Black

#Men #Justice #Trials

I am for the First Amendment from the first word to the last. I believe it means what it says.
-- Hugo Black

#Believe #Mean #Liberty

Laws are made to protect the trusting as well as the suspicious
-- Hugo Black

#Law #Made #Protect

In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do
-- Hugo Black

#War #Government #Vietnam

It is my belief that there are "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be "absolutes."
-- Hugo Black

#Men #Rights #Purpose

I was brought up to believe that Scotch whisky would need a tax preference to survive in competition with Kentucky bourbon.
-- Hugo Black

#Believe #Scotch #Kentucky

The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation.
-- Hugo Black

#Views #Justice #Judging

Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others.
-- Hugo Black

#Country #Buddhism #Law

The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.
-- Hugo Black

#Mean #Government #Law