Charles Evans Hughes Quotes

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.

The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope.

We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our property and our liberty and our property under the Constitution.

Each man begins with his own world to conquer, and his education is the measure of his conquest.

We [the Government] are here not as masters but as servants, we are not here to glory in power, but to attest our loyalty to the commands and restrictions laid down by our sovereign, the people of the United States, in whose name and by whose will we exercise our brief authority.

Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses.

War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.

The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal will take care of themselves. Look after the courts of the poor, who stand most in need of justice. The security of the republic will be found in the treatment of the poor and the ignorant. In indifference to their misery and helplessness lies disaster.

I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not breakdown from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.

Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.'

The first lesson in civics is that efficient government begins at home.

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company

Every young man should aim at independence and should prepare himself for a vocation; above all, he should so manage his life that the steps of his progress are taken without improper aids; that he calls no one master, that he does not win or deserve the reputation of being a tool of others, and that if called to public service he may assume its duties with the satisfaction of knowing that he is free to rise to the height of his opportunity.

Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation

The greater the importance to safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion.

Dissents are appeals to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of another day.

While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.

The Constitution is what the judges say it is.

The United States is the greatest law factory the world has ever known.

The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets.

When we deal with questions relating to principles of law and their applications, we do not suddenly rise into a stratosphere of icy certainty.

In a number of cases dissenting opinions have in time become the law.

The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.

It is the essence of the institutions of liberty that it be recognized that guilt is personal and cannot be attributed to the holding of opinions or to mere intent in the absence of overt acts.

Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency.