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History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.

Warren E. Burger

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Warren E. Burger
Age: 87 †
Born: 1907
Born: September 17
Died: 1995
Died: June 25
Former Chief Justice Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Politician
St Paul
Minnesota
Warren Earl Burger
Become
Congress
Highly
Badges
Women
Filled
Servant
Rendered
Without
Masters
Effective
Proposition
Men
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Performance
Servants
Diplomas
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Examples
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Performances
Propositions
Commonsense
History
Tests
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Reality
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More quotes by Warren E. Burger

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[I]n constitutional adjudication some steps, which when taken were thought to approach 'the verge,' have become the platform for yet further steps. A certain momentum develops in constitutional theory and it can be a 'downhill thrust' easily set in motion but difficult to retard or stop.
Warren E. Burger
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The State may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.
Warren E. Burger
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There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.
Warren E. Burger
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We may be well on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated.
Warren E. Burger
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Trials by the adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood.
Warren E. Burger
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To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.
Warren E. Burger
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The right of every person to be let alone must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.
Warren E. Burger
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Doctors still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?
Warren E. Burger
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We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians.
Warren E. Burger
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It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to discover a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.
Warren E. Burger
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The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily lives of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week.
Warren E. Burger
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[No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.
Warren E. Burger
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Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.
Warren E. Burger
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The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.
Warren E. Burger
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There may be some incorrigible human beings who cannot be changed except by God's own mercy to that one person.
Warren E. Burger
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A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.
Warren E. Burger
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It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house.
Warren E. Burger
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Guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant in the criminal trials as we flounder in a morass of artificial rules poorly conceived and often impossible [to apply].
Warren E. Burger
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For better or worse, editing is what editors are for and editing is selection and choice of material. That editors newspaper or broadcast can and do abuse this power is beyond doubt, but that is no reason to deny the discretion Congress provided.
Warren E. Burger
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The notion that most people want black-robed judges, well-dressed lawyers and fine-paneled courtrooms as the setting to resolve their disputes is not correct. People with problems, like people with pains, want relief, and they want it as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
Warren E. Burger