The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any government regulation of religious beliefs as such. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold views abhorrent to the authorities.

— William J. Brennan

William J. Brennan Quotes

The Bill of Rights never gets off the page and into the lives of most Americans.

— William J. Brennan

If our free society is to endure, and I know it will, those who govern must recognize that the Framers of the Constitution limited their power in order to preserve human dignity and the air of freedom which is our proudest heritage.

— William J. Brennan

We cannot let colorblindness become myopia which masks the reality that many “created equal” have been treated within our lifetimes as inferior both by the law and by their fellow citizens.

— William J. Brennan

The public schools are supported entirely, in most communities, by public funds-funds exacted not only from parents, nor alone from those who hold particular religious views, nor indeed from those who subscribe to any creed at all.

— William J. Brennan

The Constitution was framed fundamentally as a bulwark against governmental power, and preventing the arbitrary administration of punishment is a basic ideal of any society that purports to be governed by the rule of law.

— William J. Brennan

Clerks get into the damnedest wrangles – which is the way they help me.

— William J. Brennan

The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide ends. It is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right.

— William J. Brennan

The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any government regulation of religious beliefs as such. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold views abhorrent to the authorities.

— William J. Brennan

Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered.

— William J. Brennan

Consequences flow from a justice’s interpretation in a direct and immediate way. A judicial decision respecting the incompatibility of Jim Crow with a constitutional guarantee of equality is not simply a contemplative exercise in defining the shape of a just society. It is an order.

— William J. Brennan

Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but is serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment.

— William J. Brennan

The calculated killing of a human being by the state involves, by its very nature, an absolute denial of the executed person’s humanity. The most vile murder does not, in my view, release the state from constitutional restraint on the destruction of human dignity.

— William J. Brennan

If we are to be as a shining city upon a hill, it will be because of our ceaseless pursuit of the constitutional ideal of human dignity.

— William J. Brennan

We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time.

— William J. Brennan

If a policeman must know the Constitution, then why not a planner?

— William J. Brennan

The quest for freedom, dignity, and the rights of man will never end.

— William J. Brennan

Whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.

— William J. Brennan

Our statute books gradually became laden with gross, stereotyped distinctions between the sexes and, indeed, throughout much of the 19th century the position of women in our society was, in many respects, comparable to that of blacks under the pre-Civil War slave codes.

— William J. Brennan

We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so, we dilute the freedom this cherished emblem represents.

— William J. Brennan

We hold that the Constitution does not forbid the states minor intrusions into an individual’s body under stringently limited conditions.

— William J. Brennan
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