Hugo L. Black Quotes

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

I was brought up to believe that Scotch whisky would need a tax preference to survive in competition with Kentucky bourbon.

In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

It would degrade our country and our judicial system to permit our courts to be bullied, insulted and humiliated and the orderly progress thwarted and obstructed by defendants brought before them charged with crimes.

Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

The flagrant disregard in the courtroom of elementary standards of proper conduct should not and cannot be tolerated.

The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have [to] bare the secrets of government and inform the people.

The Framers [of the Constitution] knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.

The layman's constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that which he doesn't like is unconstitutional.

We believe trial judges confronted with disruptive, contumacious, stubbornly defiant defendants must be given sufficient discretion to meet the circumstances in each case.

When I was 40, my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn't play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again.