It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in question, then there is no offense.

I’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

When you are spiritually connected, you are not looking for occasions to be offended, and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.

You don’t send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like ‚shooting an unarmed child,‘ when that ‚child‘ was beating him bloody.

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I’m concerned about the recklessness of public policy that endangers people’s lives, especially in minority communities, where crime often is such a scourge.

Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap – let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

I love being in a courtroom.

We shouldn’t have to be burdened with all the technicalities that come up from time to time with shrewd, smart lawyers interpreting what the laws or what the Constitution may or may not say.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

Bobby Knight told me this: ‚There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.‘ In other words a good offense wins.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law; for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings.

Most of us have hoped and prayed for something to happen a certain way, but it didn’t. And when this happened, we had a choice to make: to react with offense toward God or to trust Him anyway.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Abortion isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a crime. Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

It was an act of patriotism when we worked to pass a law allowing the prosecution of federal hate crimes in the name of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd.

I’ve analyzed the best I can… and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

Just because you’ve seen ‚My Cousin Vinny‘ doesn’t qualify you to be a federal judge.

The 14th Amendment was recognized right away to be problematic. The concept of person was both too narrow and too broad, and the courts went to work to overcome both of those flaws.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

I understood that with the swipe of my pen as a prosecutor, I would have the decision in my pen to make a decision about someone’s life.

I think the running game is very important to every offense. Being balanced is extremely important. There’s times where you have to throw the ball. You could be down late in the game, you need to come back; you have to be able to pass it when they know you’re passing it.

We don’t seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?

Most states in the union where the death penalty is theoretically on the books don’t have executions.

My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

You can’t score if you’re turning it over. It’s like a punt. If you go out and you punt 12 times, you’re not scoring points. That’s not good. So, when you turn the ball over and throw interceptions, you’re giving the other team more opportunities and your team less opportunities.

The place of justice is a hallowed place.

The worst crime is faking it.

Due process should matter.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

In most communities it is illegal to cry ‚fire‘ in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It’s fine to be a pop star. ‚Oh, it’s great, lots of fun, aren’t they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!‘

Justice Scalia and I served together on the D.C. Circuit. So his votes are not surprising to me. What I like about him is that he’s very funny and very smart.

Law is mind without reason.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

I think we all change each other’s paths. I don’t know which law idea that is in physics, but I don’t think any of us can live without affecting one another.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

I think the FBI is the premier law enforcement agency in all of human history.