Bryan A Gartner writing in the January issue of the National Review had assembled a few pithy comments by Justices of the Supreme Court. Seven of them are reproduced below.
Chaos serves no social end. Justice Jackson 1942.
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves eliminating dissenters. Compulsory elimination of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. Justice Jackson 1943.
If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. Justice Holmes 1929.
Persecution for the expression of opinions seems perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your promises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition. Justice Holmes 1919. This statement is reminiscent of Isaiah Berlin’s observation that there is no limit to the number of eggs you’ll break to make the omelet of the perfect society you purport to have discovered.
It will need more than the Nineteenth Amendment to convince me that there are no differences between men and women, or that legislation cannot take those differences into account. Justice Holmes 1923.
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation. Chief Justice Marshall 1819.
Democracy has its own capacity for tyranny. Some of the most menacing encroachments upon liberty invoke the democratic principle. Justice Hughes later Chief Justice, between his two stints on the Court.