Quotes from Sam Ervin

The Supreme Court has made God unconstitutional.

Humor makes our heavy burdens light and smoothes the rough spots in our pathways.

I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.

If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were, in effect, breaking into the home of every citizen.

A school prayer amendment would confer upon public school boards a power the First Amendment now denies to Congress and the states, that is, the power to establish religion.

I'll have you understand I am running this court, and the law hasn't got a damn thing to do with it!

When religion controls government, political liberty dies; and when government controls religion, religious liberty perishes.

Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion.

Government is contemptuous of true religion when it confiscates the taxes of Caesar to finance the things of God.

Divine right went out with the American Revolution and doesn't belong to the White House aides. What meat do they eat that makes them grow so great?

The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.

Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.

Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.

The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.

I've always been worried about people who are willing to work for nothing. Sometimes that's all you get from them, nothing.

A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.