Robert Bork Quotes

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• I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.

  Robert Bork

  School, Thinking, Law

  58 Copy quote

• Radical feminism is the most destructive and fanatical movement to come down to us from the Sixties. This is a revolutionary, not a reformist, movement, and it is meeting with considerable success. Totalitarian in spirit, it is deeply antagonistic to traditional Western culture and proposes the complete restructuring of society, morality, and human nature.

  Robert Bork

  Radical Feminism, Feminist, Western Culture

  21 Copy quote

• When a judge goes beyond [his proper function] and reads entirely new values into the Constitution, values the framers and ratifiers did not put there, he deprives the people of their liberty. That liberty, which the Constitution clearly envisions, is the liberty of the people to set their own social agenda through the process of democracy.

  Robert Bork

  People, Judging, Democracy

  20 Copy quote

• As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely as we once would have [the] constriction of our liberties that would have been utterly intolerable a mere half century ago.

  Robert Bork

  Powerful, Government, Liberty

  26 Copy quote

• One man's larceny is another's just distribution of goods.

  Robert Bork

  Men, Goods, Distribution

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.249, Simon and Schuster

  21 Copy quote

• Conservatives . . . may decide to join the game and seek activist judges with conservative views. Should that come to pass, those who have tempted the courts to political judging will have gained nothing for themselves but will have destroyed a great and essential institution. . . . There are only two sides. Either the Constitution and statutes are law, which means their principles are known and control judges, or they are malleable texts that judges may rewrite to see that particular groups or political causes win.

  Robert Bork

  Mean, Winning, Views

  18 Copy quote

• Our country is being radically altered, step by step, by Justices who are not following any law.

  Robert Bork

  Country, Law, Justice

  20 Copy quote

• If conservatives come to control the White House and both Houses of Congress, there will be very little change in Hollywood, the network evening news, universities, church bureaucracies, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Institutions that are overwhelmingly left-liberal will continue to misinform the public and distort public discourse.

  Robert Bork

  Christian, Religious, New York

  7 Copy quote

• The National Rifle Association is always arguing that the Second Amendment determines the right to bear arms. But I think it really is the people's right to bear arms in a militia. The NRA thinks it protects their right to have Teflon-coated bullets. But that's not the original understanding.

  Robert Bork

  Thinking, Always Arguing, People

  "Advocates: Point and Counterpoint, Laurence Tribe and Robert Bork Debate the Framers' Spacious Terms". Miriam Bensimhorn, Life Magazine (Special Issue), Fall 1991.

  18 Copy quote

• [The current governing judicial philosophy is:] If you want something passionately enough, it is guaranteed by the Constitution. No need to fiddle around gathering votes from recalcitrant citizens.

  Robert Bork

  Philosophy, Want Something, Gathering

  8 Copy quote

• No church that panders to the zeitgeist deserves respect, and very shortly it will not get respect, except from those who find it politically useful, and that is less respect than disguised contempt.

  Robert Bork

  Church, Politics, Zeitgeist

  9 Copy quote

• The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left.

  Robert Bork

  Promise, Judicial Review, Constitution

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

  86 Copy quote

• Those who made and endorsed our Constitution knew man's nature, and it is to their ideas, rather than to the temptations of utopia, that we must ask that our judges adhere.

  Robert Bork

  Men, Ideas, Judging

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.355, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge.

  Robert Bork

  Law, Judging, Democracy

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.318, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• No activity that society thinks immoral is victimless. Knowledge that an activity is taking place is a harm to those who find it profoundly immoral.

  Robert Bork

  Thinking, Harm, Immoral

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.123, Simon and Schuster

  13 Copy quote

• The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.

  Robert Bork

  Equality, Law, Purpose

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.82, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

• By depriving the charged person of any defenses [the rulings] mean that sexual dalliance, however voluntarily engaged in, becomes harassment whenever an employee sees fit, after the fact, so to characterize it.

  Robert Bork

  Mean, Defense, Facts

  14 Copy quote

• It is a ship with a great deal of sail but a very shallow keel.

  Robert Bork

  Inspirational, Funny, Sailing

  Robert H. Bork (2008). “A time to speak: selected writings and arguments”, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

  12 Copy quote

• A society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable.

  Robert Bork

  Life And Love, Government, Law

  10 Copy quote

• The judge's authority derives entirely from the fact that he is applying the law and not his personal values. That is why the American public accepts the decisions of its courts, accepts even decisions that nullify the laws a majority of the electorate or their representatives voted for.

  Robert Bork

  Law, Judging, Decision

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.300, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes, who are highly influential and tend to view religion as primitive superstition. They believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance.

  Robert Bork

  Religious, Believe, Views

  18 Copy quote

• Being 'at the mercy of legislative majorities' is merely another way of describing the basic American plan: representative democracy.

  Robert Bork

  Democracy, Majority, Way

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• The American press is extraordinarily free and vigorous, as it should be. It should be, not because it is free of inaccuracy, oversimplification and bias, but because the alternative to that freedom is worse than those failings.

  Robert Bork

  Government, Alternatives, Failing

  "Abroad At Home; Getting Even" by Anthony Lewis, www.nytimes.com. April 11, 1985.

  9 Copy quote

• Americans revere both the Constitution and an independent Court that applies the document's provisions. The Court has done many excellent things in our history, and few people are willing to see its power broken. The difficulty with all proposals to respond to the Court when it behaves unconstitutionally is that they would create a power to destroy the Court's essential work as well.

  Robert Bork

  Independent, People, Broken

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• The right to procreate is not guaranteed, explicitly or implicitly, by the Constitution

  Robert Bork

  Constitution

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

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