Courthouses Quotes

In the early nineties, I was a cub reporter on a city newspaper in Limerick, and assigned to the courthouse there. One day, an old detective sergeant came and whispered to me in the press pit. He pointed out a young offender, a teenager who was up for stealing a car or something relatively minor, and said, 'See this kid? He'll kill.'

In Paris there are two dens, one for thieves, the other for murderers. The den of thieves is the Stock Exchange; the den of murderers is the Courthouse.

I hiked around town, the air sweet and dry, and was sort of overwhelmed by the perfection of it -- the old courthouse, the train depot, Mount [Jumbo] and Mount Sentinel rising up, the neon bars, the funky festivity of a college town .

I found out long ago that the place where the law is apt to be abused the most is right around a courthouse.

When you look at the startling ruins of Nuremberg, you are looking at a result of the war. When you look at the prisoners on view in the courthouse, you are looking at 22 of the causes.

The storytelling tradition that you bring from the South, I don't know where it arose, but it's still there. You can't go to the feed store, or the country courthouse without running into storytellers.

Your flag flyin' over the courthouse Means certain things are set in stone. Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't

Somewhere "out there," beyond the walls of the courthouse, run currents and tides of public opinion which lap at the courtroom door.

Criminal justice, as it pertains to the Goldmans and Morgan Stanleys of the world, is not adversarial combat, with cops and crooks duking it out in interrogation rooms and courthouses. Instead, it's a cocktail party between friends and colleagues who from month to month and year to year are constantly switching sides and trading hats.

The last possible deed is that which defines perception itself, an invisible golden chord that connects us: illegal dancing in the courthouse corridors.

We got married drunk in Vegas . . . We dated for a year, and we got married at a drive-through chapel in a cab. [We thought] you have to go down to the courthouse and sign papers and stuff, so who knew? We were married, and apparently now that [Rob] is getting married for real, his lawyer dug up something.

Community is not something you have, like pizza. Now is it something you can buy. It's a living organism based on a web of interdependencies- which is to say, a local economy. It expresses itself physically as connectedness, as buildings actively relating to each other, and to whatever public space exists, be it the street, or the courthouse or the village green.

The audience that storms the box-office of the theater to gain entrance to a sensational show is small and sleepy compared with the throng that crashes the courthouse door when something concerning real life and death is to be laid bare to the public.

"I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken." I should like to have that written over the portals of every church, every school, and every courthouse, and, may I say, of every legislative body in the United States. I should like to have every court begin, "I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that we may be mistaken."

Why does every black person in the movies have to play a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a courthouse carrying a briefcase?

The big guys, the big dogs, are going to own everything from the White House to the courthouse.

If I were a person of color in Florida, I would pick up a brick and start walking toward that courthouse in Sanford. Those that do not, those that hold the pain and betrayal inside and somehow manage to resist violence - these citizens are testament to a stoic tolerance that is more than the rest of us deserve. I confess, their patience and patriotism is well beyond my own.

Anyone who's had a shower and hasn't ingested illegal narcotics within a couple of days stands out on a bench in the courthouse.

I worked as a head cook at courthouses and high schools. I left it behind when I started getting into my music real heavy.

If confirmed, [Judge of the Supreme Court] will write the words that will either broaden or narrow our rights for the rest of your working life. You will be interpreting the Constitution in which we as a people place our faith and on which our freedoms as a nation rest. And on a daily basis, the words of your opinions will affect countless individuals as they seek protection behind the courthouse doors.

I love getting into the basement of a courthouse, and all the dusty records - all that stuff makes me really happy.

If U.S. Grant had been leading a team of baseball players, they'd have second guessed him all the way to the doorknob of the Appomattox Courthouse.

All over Montana, you can walk into a bar, a café or even a school or a courthouse and just listen for a while as people talk to each other. And you will hear somebody, before very long, say something outrageously racist.

I'm proud to be an Oakie from Muskogee, a place where even squares can have a ball. We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse and white lightning's still the biggest thrill of all.

When Henry Hill [in Goodfellas] got arrested for the first time and Robert DeNiro met him at the courthouse and Henry Hill was really upset, 'cause he thought Robert DeNiro would be really mad at him. And DeNiro comes up to him and he gives him a $100 and he goes, "You got pinched. We all get pinched, but you did it right, you didn't say nothing."

A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.

Allowing Texas to display the Ten Commandments on State property but disallowing Kentucky courthouses from doing the same is a poor and flawed interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

Yet far from putting any meaningful constraints on law enforcement in this war, the U.S. Supreme Court has given the police license to stop and search just about anyone, in any public place, without a shred of evidence of criminal activity, and it has also closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of the judicial process from stops and searches to plea bargaining and sentencing.