Stephen Breyer Quotes

Our laws need to reflect the evolution of technology and the changing expectations of American society. This is why the Constitution is often called a 'living' document.

A national movement, which does not include in its platform the demand for an economical change advantageous to the masses has no chance of success unless supported by foreign aid.

Technological change is beneficial only when other jobs replace the ones lost.

[T]he Constitution was a product of its times. [Progressive]

When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result.

There's major changes happening with technology and economics. But unfortunately, the initial reaction on any new frontier, it gets bloody, and people are overreacting, and very defensive, and they're not taking risks. In fact, they're taking such safe measures that they're shooting themselves in the foot.

I hope that young people especially will begin to have a better understanding of slavery and its effects, which are still evident today, to understand those parallels and, from there, begin ta be a part of the wave of hope to change things for the better.

This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers.

In their day, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names.

Well, before the New Deal...[The Emancipation Proclamation] would be a good start.

Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education.

Education is the way to achieve far-reaching results, it is the proper way to promote compassion and tolerance in society.

Feel me now, picture my pain, embrace my words, make the world change.

Racial understanding is not something we find, but something that we must create. Through education, we seek to change attitudes.

FDR was enormously influenced by this, and afraid. I mean, his intervention was to save capitalism. It wasn't to basically appease the workers. And I think that today you don't have those movements.

The cross to me is complete nonviolence because Jesus said, "Love your enemy. Do not kill." I realized that I could never kill anyone or hurt anyone, but I was committed to trying to bring about social and political and economic change.

No matter what happens, nothing can prevent the historical process by which society demands freedom and democracy.

Management is the gate through which social and economic and political change, indeed change in every direction, is diffused though society.

I tell you, my fellow Americans, that if we learned anything from the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the governments in Eastern Europe, even a totally controlled society cannot resist the winds of change that economics and technology and information flow have imposed in this world of ours. That is not an option. Our only realistic option is to embrace these changes and create the jobs of tomorrow.

The Constitution is a 200-year-old parchment, simply because we digitize the words should not suggest their meanings change.

Whether we're talking about the New Deal or the Great Society: they didn't come about because they wanted to buy people off with "hush money." They were the outcomes of struggles. They were the outcomes, in the 1930s, of a viable socialist-communist movement. They were the outcomes of a viable workers' movement. FDR didn't give in because he wanted to shut people up, he gave in because he was under pressure. He had no choice.

I hold in my heart that rebellious spirit of youth that demands change.

the main necessity on both sides of a revolution is kindness, which makes possible the most surprising things. To treat one's neighbor as oneself is the fundamental maxim for revolution.

When women breached the power structure in the 1980s?two economies finally merged. Beauty was no longer just a symbolic form of currency: it literally became money.

Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else...But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists.