Quotes from HARRY BLACKMUN

Abortion raises moral and spiritual questions over which honorable persons can disagree sincerely and profoundly. But those disagreements did not then and do not now relieve us of our duty to apply the Constitution faithfully.

Whatever rights or activities may be "fundamental" under the Privilege and Immunities Clause, we ware not persuaded, and hold that elk hunting by nonresidents in Montana is not one of them.

One has to be aware that human beings are involved in all these cases.

We're all eccentrics. We're nine prima donnas.

Constitutional rights do not always have easily ascertainable boundaries, and controversy over the meaning of our Nation's most majestic guarantees frequently has been turbulent. As judges, however, we are sworn to uphold the law even when its content gives rise to bitter dispute.

I get disturbed when we have a case that goes off on theory and does injustice to the litigant. I think we're there to try to do justice to him as well as to develop a great, overlying cloud of legal theory.

For today, at least, the law of abortion stands undisturbed. For today, the women of this Nation still retain the liberty to control their destinies. But the signs are evident and very ominous, and a chill wind blows.

In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.

Not every concept of ownership or possession is "arcane." Not every interest in property exists only in the desiccated atmosphere of ancient maxims and dusty books.

I know I would be happier if the Court didn't plunge back and forth from left to right, just by the addition of a new Justice.

For more than 20 years, I have endeavored -- indeed, I have struggled -- along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor. Rather than continue to coddle the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.

Diversity yields strength. This is America's history and example. Indeed, diversity is our very creed, as is evident from the wording of our Constitution and its Amendments, from our persistent acknowledgment of the equality of persons, and from our accepting each other and profiting from our differences. To oppose it is to ignore and violate the American testament and its precious dream.

It is time that we recognize intolerance for its miserable worth and, at last, work together to eliminate it. This will be a difficult task, but it is a difficult task worth doing.

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

Intolerance, it seems to me, is taught and is not inherent in man's character. It is taught at a young age by overprotective elders, by unfortunate examples, and by poor-mouthing differences rather than exulting in the excitement of their presence.

From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

Why are we so willing not to accept others who are not precisely like us? Why do racism and anti-Semitism, for example, run so deep in the consciousness of many Americans? Is it because of man's basic inhumanity to man, or is it prompted by a sense of inferiority that makes us want to dominate others, to protect our turf, and to seek a status with no competition?

Each provision of the Constitution is important, and I cannot subscribe to a doctrine of unlimited absolutism for the First Amendment at the cost of downgrading other provisions.