Quotes from John Paul Stevens

To show a 'well-founded fear of persecution', an alien need not prove that it is more likely than not that he or she will be persecuted in his or her home country.

Although it may not be a castle, [it is the] functional equivalent of a hotel room, a vacation and retirement home or a hunting and fishing cabin.

Well, in my job, I avoid political commentary.

I play duplicate bridge and I play golf and I go swimming once in a while.

When I joined the Supreme Court in 1975, both state and federal judges accepted the Court's unanimous decision in United States v. Miller as having established that the Second Amendment's protection of the right to bear arms was possessed only by members of the militia and applied only to weapons used by the militia.

The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.

All I can say is I did the best I could, and I didn't do well enough on many occasions.

During my years as a practicing lawyer, it just was part of your study of what Congress was trying to say in their statutes. I never really considered judges or scholars as either those who used legislative history or those who were opposed to it until after I got on the court.

I think maybe the people in elected positions are more interested in preserving their jobs than in doing the best job possible.

District of Columbia v. Heller, which recognized an individual right to possess a firearm under the Constitution, is unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision that the Supreme Court announced during my tenure on the bench.

Although NFL teams have common interests such as promoting the NFL brand, they are still separate, profit-making entities, and their interests in licensing team trademarks are not necessarily aligned.

The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.

If you're interested in the job and in the kind of work that's done, you have to have an interest in who's going to fill your shoes.

It almost seems I was writing two separate books, the first one about the time before I went on the court and the second one about the many, many terms I was on the court.

I have been opposed to ceremonies at the White House. It gives the impression that the court is subordinate to the executive, which I think is quite wrong.

Public officials, including state legislators, have a duty to act impartially.

There was a fear among the original framers that the federal government would be so strong that they might destroy the state militias.

To make a coverage decision, doesn't one have to make a medical judgment?

The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.

While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

Our love cannot be measured, it just is.

Of course, when I joined the Navy and when I took up the correspondence course in cryptography, I had to sign an oath that I would never reveal what sort of work I was involved in. It was only some years after the war that Congress passed a statute relieving me of that obligation.

But I wound like people to think I was an honest judge and a good judge. And I always tried the reach the best result in every case.