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

Antonin Scalia

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Antonin Scalia
Age: 79 †
Born: 1936
Born: March 11
Died: 2016
Died: February 13
Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Professor
Trenton
New Jersey
Antonin Gregory Scalia
Scalia
Antonin G. Scalia
Wants
Liberty
Melting
Rights
Libertarianism
Politics
Worthless
Means
Libertarian
Mean
Bill
Bills
Majority

More quotes by Antonin Scalia

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Why can't the state accede to the public's wishes?
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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.
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Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.
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Campaign promises are - by long democratic tradition - the least binding form of human commitment.
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It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction.
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This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?
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One can be sophisticated and believe in God. Reason and intellect are not to be laid aside where matters of religion are concerned.
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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.
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People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.
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Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.
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Ever so subtly, without even alluding to the last obstacles preserved by earlier opinions that we now push out of our path, we effectively replace the goal of a discrimination-free society with the quite imcompatible goal of proportionate representation by race and by sex in the workplace.
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When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?
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The court's job is to uphold the Constitution and you don't call that off in times of crisis. Would the framers have allowed this practice?
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We should start calling this law SCOTUScare ... [T]his Court's two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years ... And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.
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[The] government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.
Antonin Scalia
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I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion.
Antonin Scalia
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Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.
Antonin Scalia
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You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations... until they were all litigated out.
Antonin Scalia
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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
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A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement.
Antonin Scalia