Quotes from Antonin Scalia

I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better.

The attitude of people associating guns with nothing but crime, that is what has to be changed. I grew up at a time when people were not afraid of people with firearms.

Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.

Tyrannies have long lists of rights. What they do not have is structural restraints on the power of government.

Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.

Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.

It is myopic to base sweeping change on the narrow experience of a few years.

Grant Gilmore: "In Heaven there will be no law, and the lion will lie down with the lamb….In Hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.

A written constitution is needed to protect values AGAINST prevailing wisdom.

To invoke alien law when it agrees with one's own thinking, and ignore it otherwise, is not reasoned decisionmaking, but sophistry.

I attack ideas. I don't attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas.

You're looking at me as though I'm weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It's in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.

We had to do something [in Bush v. Gore ], because countries were laughing at us. France was laughing at us.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

In 1905, the Supreme Court of the United States applied the rule to the country's founding document: "The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now.

As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it: "We do not inquire what the legislature meant; we ask only what the statute means.

Words change meaning over time, and often in unpredictable ways. Queen Anne is said (probably apocryphally) to have commented about Sir Christopher Wren's architecture at St. Paul's Cathedral that it was awful, artificial, and amusing—by which she meant that it was awe-inspiring, highly artistic, and thought-provoking.

By judicial conservative, I mean a judge who does not advance any political or policy preferences, but whose approach to constitutional and statutory interpretation involves fidelity to the text of the Constitution and adherence to the original understanding of that document or to the intent of its drafters.

the triad of human perfection": knowledge, judgment, and character.

The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie. [Referring to pronouncement by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Obergefell v. Hodges: The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.]

For example, the ambiguities in a contract will be construed against the party that drafted the document (contra proferentem).

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent.