Quotes from Joseph Story

To secure integrity there must a lofty sense of duty and a deep responsibility to future times as well as to God.

A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must, in practice, be a bad government.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Every successive generation becomes a living memorial of our public schools, and a living example of their excellence.

There never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation.

I know of no power, indeed, of which a free people ought to be more jealous, than of that of levying taxes and duties.

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.

A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government.

[The law] is a jealous mistress, and requires a long and constant courtship. It is not to be won by trifling favors, but by lavish homage.

A good government implies two things first, fidelity to the objects of the government secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained.

And it is no less true, that personal security and private property rest entirely upon the wisdom, the stability, and the integrity of the courts of justice.

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them.

How easily men satisfy themselves that the Constitution is exactly what they wish it to be

One of the surest means of preserving peace is always to be prepared for war.

The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical patronage of the national government.

at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the [First] Amendment...the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. Any attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.

There never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: 1829 speech at Harvard.

No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.

And it is no less true, that personal security and private property rest entirely upon the wisdom, the stability, and the integrity of the courts of justice.

How easily men satisfy themselves that the Constitution is exactly what they wish it to be

A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained.

It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects... that is was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject.