Antonin Scalia Quotes

I don’t attack people. I attack ideas. And some very good people can have some very bad ideas.

I like reading things where someone's looked at what I do with some honesty, and maybe been challenged by it, and they have something to say that shows they've thought about it, even if they don't necessarily like it.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

I hope that I am generous and tolerant, but certainly on the intellectual side I think that there are discoverable truths, and some things that are closer approximations to the truth than others.

Critics reach that age when it is as valuable and daring to hold a negative opinion as it is for a positive. We learn and understand from both.

One may criticize even what one reveres.

If you disagree with me about a position I have taken, or what I've done, tell me, argue with me, debate. Sometimes, right and good are not that clear; at other times, it is only deliberate and respectful debate that leads us to understand what road we should take.

I will attack ideas very hard. I am not shy about that one bit. So I don't want people to think that because I had a call for civility that that means I shy away from debate and that I'm agreeable. That's not the case. What is the case is that I will not question who you are as a person.

Civilized discourse demands critical thinking, self-reflexiveness, sober-headed analysis.

When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has any axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone's thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a "case" with deliberate suppression of his opponent's point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends.

I think there are different ways of being rigorous, and I am asking people to be as rigorous in their pleasure as in their criticism.

Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.

Good people can disagree - all you want is honesty, because you know, if I disagree, I'm willing to debate you on that, and then let the public decide what's good policy and bad policy.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.

We have to replace our focus on personalities with a focus on ideas so that the opinionated and self-serving pronouncements and forms of cyber-bullying are replaced by thoughtful dialogue and open-minded conversation.

The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.

In the hands of good writers, you have the opportunity to present both sides of an opinion equally and that you leave it to the audience to listen and then make up their own minds.

We can be critical of the things that we love. That is possible.

Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

Look at the evidence and to be willing to question your own truths, and to be willing to scrutinize things that you hold dearly because that way, that transparency, that self-awareness, will protect you from ever becoming somebody that whose beliefs somehow make them have myopic vision about what could be.

If something is wrong, it'll prove to be wrong in the wash, and if it's right, you don't want to not expose yourself to it - so I read everything, no matter how horrible it gets. You listen and take it in and if it doesn't sway you, you'll know you considered it.

The power of real debate is in the language and intellectual honesty of the debaters, alongside the engagement of spectators.

Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get.