FAVORITE QUOTES
Malo mori quamfoedari ("I would rather die than be dishonored").-My Strode family's motto
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"We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.
We are all [Republicans]: we are all [Democrats]. [We are all Americans]. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated,
where reason is left free to combat it.” For "A house divided against itself cannot stand." "Let us have peace!" - A combination of quotes from Presidents Jefferson, Lincoln, and Grant

"America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. It is one thing to battle successfully against world domination by military autocracy, because the infinite God never intended such a program, but it is quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life and all of life’s acquirements…" Warren G. Harding May 14, 1920

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" You can't judge judges unless you know what they're working with. Simply because you like the outcome of an opinion you say, "Oh, that's a good judge," or you dislike. Unless you want your judges to ignore the text they're dealing with - and we're always dealing with a text. It's either a regulation or a statute of the constitution. Unless you want them to ignore the text, it's really unfair to judges to say, "I like the result, therefore that's a good judge. I hate the result, therefore that's a bad judge."

You have to read the opinion and see the sections of the statute they're dealing with trying to reconcile and what not, and then you can say, "The guy did a terrible job of interpreting this statute." That's an intelligent criticism; but not just because, you know, you don't like the way the opinion comes out. And anyway, my opinions don't always come out the same way. I mean, you know, they're not always, "conservative". To the contrary, sometimes - in some respects I ought to be the pin up of the criminal defense bar because a number of my opinions have defended the rights of criminal defendants even though I'm - socially I'm a law and order conservative. My job is not to say how it ought to be but to say what the constitution demands." - Justice Scalia; July 19, 2012 Q&A with Justice Antonin Scalia

"A textualist is someone who believes that the meaning of a statute is to be derived exclusively, exclusively from the text enacted by Congress and signed by the President, or else re-passed over his veto. The text is the sole source that the judge ought to be using in making his judgment." - Justice Scalia; July 19, 2012 Q&A with Justice Antonin Scalia
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"What concerns me most as a military man is not our external adversaries; it is our internal divisiveness. We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions.

All Americans need to recognize that our democracy is an experiment -- and one that can be reversed. We all know that we're better than our current politics. Tribalism must not be allowed to destroy our experiment," he wrote. "On each of our coins is inscribed America's de facto motto, 'E Pluribus Unum' -- from many, one. For our experiment in democracy to survive, we must live that motto." - Former Defense Secretary and retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis