CHARLES EVANS HUGHES

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

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

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

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

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

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

Men do not die from overwork. They die from dissipation and worry.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

In these days of intimate relations, of economic stress and of intense desire to protect national interests and advance national opportunity, the treatment of questions which, from a legal standpoint, are domestic, often seriously affects international relations. The principle, each nation for itself to the full extent of its powers, is the principle of war, not of peace.

According to the weight of opinion, impeachable offenses include, not merely acts that are indictable, but serious misbehavior which may be considered as coming within the category of high crimes and misdemeanors

The appropriate relation of the exercise of constitutional power to the legitimate objects of that power is always a subject of judicial scrutiny.

The President cannot be disturbed. [The reporter quickly replied, "Well when he wakes up, just tell him he isn't President.

A dissent in a court of last resort is an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day when a later decision may possibly correct the error …

American government has seemed to mean naught but impotence and unavailing words.

I believe that a navy is the greatest insurer of peace that we could possibly have—a navy commensurate with our resources and commensurate with the number of dependencies we have and commensurate with our population and commensurate with our influence as a world power.

Contracts, however expressed, cannot fetter the constitutional authority of the Congress. Contracts may create rights of property, but when contracts deal with a subject matter which lies within the control of the Congress they have a congenital infirmity. Parties cannot remove their transactions from the reach of dominant constitutional power by making contracts about them.

Emergency does not create power.

our answer to the inciters of violence, our assurance of meeting peacefully—without any good reason for resort to violence—all demands to which new exigencies may give rise.

Our government is the most successful contrivance the world has ever known for preventing things from being done.