Antonin Scalia Quotes

The constant need for special waivers is symptomatic of poorly written public policy. It's a signal that the cost of compliance is unreasonably high; the benefits are hard to measure; and either legislators or regulators have failed to do their homework.

My style says, 'Look at me, don't look at me.'

I am a man of contradictions, I suppose.

We are, all of us, incoherent text, and just knowing that - knowing that no matter how much you say, 'I am this' and part of you is not that - means that you can say it.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

I ... can sniff out a bureaucracy when I see it coming [in new legislation.]

The FCC on any given day has much more influence than the better known agencies like the entire Department of Health and Human Services.

Where a phrase is susceptible of two meanings, we ought certainly to adopt that which will bring upon us the fewest inconveniences

Sometimes as human beings, we're so contradictory - we may say something or do something and completely contradict ourselves. That's what I'm learning to embrace in television - not knowing what's going to happen.

Setting regulatory certainty is very important for bitcoin. I'm opposed to the regulations, but the bitcoin businesses need to know the rules of the game in order to move ahead.

The minute you read something and you can't understand it, you can be sure it was written by a lawyer. Then, if you give it to another lawyer to read and he don't know just what it means, then you can be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer. If it's in a few words and is plain, and understandable only one way, it was written by a non-lawyer.

The law is more easily understood by few than many words. For all words are subject to ambiguity, and therefore multiplication of words in the body of the law is multiplication of ambiguity. Besides, it seems to imply (by too much diligence) that whosoever can evade the words is without the compass of the law.

Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names. It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.

We don't all agree on everything. I don't agree with myself on everything.

Dodd-Frank is 2,000 pages long. It covers thousands of rules, regulations, interpretations and things like that.

Life is too important to be taken as a joke, but too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

Truth is what most contradicts itself.

Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.

I am everything and I am nothing. I am just kidding; I am not everything and nothing. That would be ridiculous. I am just everything.

Son, the phrase is self-contradictory; "sense" is never "common".

Platitude: a statement that denies by implication what it explicitly affirms.

How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?" "They do it all the time," says Hayden. "That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.

I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one's self. In laughing even at one's need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty. In seeing life as a fruitcake, including delicious plums and bad peanuts, but meant to be devoured hungrily all the same because you couldn't feast on the plums without also sometimes being poisoned by the peanuts.

None of it meant anything, and all of it was important.