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The quest for freedom, dignity, and the rights of man will never end.

William J. Brennan

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William J. Brennan
Freedom
Ends
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Men
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More quotes by William J. Brennan

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If a policeman must know the Constitution, then why not a planner?
William J. Brennan
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The public schools are supported entirely, in most communities, by public funds-funds exacted not only from parents, nor alone from those who hold particular religious views, nor indeed from those who subscribe to any creed at all.
William J. Brennan
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We hold that the Constitution does not forbid the states minor intrusions into an individual's body under stringently limited conditions.
William J. Brennan
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We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time.
William J. Brennan
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If we are to be as a shining city upon a hill, it will be because of our ceaseless pursuit of the constitutional ideal of human dignity.
William J. Brennan
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We cannot let colorblindness become myopia which masks the reality that many created equal have been treated within our lifetimes as inferior both by the law and by their fellow citizens.
William J. Brennan
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Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but is serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment.
William J. Brennan
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Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics.
William J. Brennan
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Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.
William J. Brennan
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If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
William J. Brennan
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Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered.
William J. Brennan
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The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide ends. It is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right.
William J. Brennan
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It is tempting to pretend that minorities on death row share a fate in no way connected to our own, that our treatment of them sounds no echoes beyond the chambers in which they die. Such an illusion is ultimately corrosive, for the reverberations of injustice are not so easily confined.
William J. Brennan
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The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any government regulation of religious beliefs as such. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold views abhorrent to the authorities.
William J. Brennan
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Whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.
William J. Brennan
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Our statute books gradually became laden with gross, stereotyped distinctions between the sexes and, indeed, throughout much of the 19th century the position of women in our society was, in many respects, comparable to that of blacks under the pre-Civil War slave codes.
William J. Brennan
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You in the media ought to be ashamed of yourselves to call the provisions and the guarantees of the Bill of Rights 'Technicalities'. They're not. We are what we are because of those guarantees.
William J. Brennan
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The framers knew that liberty is a fragile thing, and so should we.
William J. Brennan
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We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so, we dilute the freedom this cherished emblem represents.
William J. Brennan
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Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it.
William J. Brennan