Law professor Quotes

It appears that my worst fears have been realised: we have made progress in everything yet nothing has changed.

We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.

I live to harass white folks.

Self-esteem is like a difficult-to-cultivate flower.

It requires frequent nurturing that occurs when you keep your word and follow through on your promises.

The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?

If he wants meaning-the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life-a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain.

The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful.

Courage is a decision you make to act in a way that works through your own fear for the greater good as opposed to pure self-interest. Courage means putting at risk your immediate self-interest for what you believe is right.

However self-sufficient we may fancy ourselves, we exist only in relation - to our friend, family, and life partners; to those we teach and mentor; to our coworkers, neighbors, strangers; and even to forces we cannot fully conceive of, let alone define. In many ways, we are our relationships.

Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.

The aspects of patriotism that hush dissent, encourage going along, and sanction comfortable distancing and compliance with what is indecent and unacceptable... those aspects are too fundamental to ignore or gloss over.

Most people ask questions because they want to know the answer;

lawyers are trained never to ask questions unless they already know the answer.

As my father-in-law once said, when they talk about taxes it's always for teachers, firemen, and police - but when they spend your taxes, it always seems to go to some guy in a leather chair downtown you never heard of.

Michelle Alexander's brave and bold new book paints a haunting picture in which dreary felon garb, post-prison joblessness, and loss of voting rights now do the stigmatizing work once done by colored-only water fountains and legally segregated schools. With dazzling candor, Alexander argues that we all pay the cost of the new Jim Crow.

A rule without exceptions is an instrument capable of doing mischief to the innocent and bringing grief - as well as injustice - to those who should gain exemptions from the rule's functioning.

In a racially divided society, majority rule is not a reliable instrument of democracy.

I've written a book entitled 'Islam: the Challenges of Democracy,' because it is a challenge. It requires careful interpretation of the Islamic tradition and Islamic theology, and there's a lot in there that would support democratic ideals.

Today enormous effort goes into convincing the American public that we're just consumers of media manipulation and sound-bites and spin doctors. That we care only about ourselves, money, and stuff. That acting out of passion and conviction doesn't make a difference. But all history shows that it does.

Personally, I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons.

Gun control does not decrease gun ownership by criminals but instead reduces their incentives to refrain from violence because it decreases the supply of armed law-abiding citizens who might resist them.

Privacy is rarely lost in one fell swoop.

It is usually eroded over time, little bits dissolving almost imperceptibly until we finally begin to notice how much is gone.

According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, learning promises liberation, but it is not liberation from demanding moral ideals and social norms, or liberation to act on our desires-it is, rather, liberation from slavery to those desires, from slavery to self.

You can't win for losing. Either you fulfill their stereotype of being a radical 60's person or you've sold out. In fact, of course, millions of people who were active in the 60's are doing work on issues that try to reflect their values.

The American obliviousness towards the suffering of Palestinians refugees plays a major part in radicalizing people. And we are fanning the flames of puritanism.

The critical question is how a religious tradition is interpreted.

Is it interpreted in ways that are pro-human rights or in ways that are a throwback to the Dark Ages?

Think about that: at a time when it was inconceivable to have a woman rabbi or a woman scholar of Christian theology or canon law, the Islamic civilization boasted hundreds of women who were authorities in Islamic law and Islamic theology and that taught some of the most famous male jurists and left behind a remarkable corpus of writings.

There's a tendency, especially among academics, to see politics as deeply dirty and deeply egotistical.

Things poll well, but people don't believe that politicians are telling the truth. Politicians might mention renewable energy, and the public will think, "That sounds good, but I don't believe they're going to do everything they can to build those towers."

One of the most dangerous things about Fox News isn't that it's right wing but that it's nihilistic. It takes away the capacity to believe in politics.

It seems foolhardy to assume that the armed state will necessarily be benevolent. The American political tradition is, for good or ill, based in large measure on a healthy mistrust of the state.

The real terrorist is the American government, state terrorism unleashed against the world.

What's wrong with "the new elite?" Forget cultural insularity or smugness.

The main problem with the "new elite" is that they're not an elite at all. That is, they aren't particularly smart, or competent.

A woman's love for a man is half animal passion and half hate.

The more a woman loves a man, the more she hates him.

With 'swift-boating' now being used by the ignorant as a synonym for false charges, it's worth remembering that it was John Kerry who had to retract his statement about his secret Christmas mission to Cambodia, despite it having allegedly been 'seared, seared' into his memory.

There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.

Americans love to read about violence.

I wish that I had bridged the feminist movement and the anti-war movement better than I did.

Camera phones threaten to turn everyone into amateur paparazzi.

We are witnessing our personal space shrink because of the way technology is being used.

The purpose of the right to bear arms is twofold;

to allow individuals to protect themselves and their families, and to ensure a body of armed citizenry from which a militia could be drawn, whether that militia's role was to protect the nation, or to protect the people from a tyrannical government.

[T]he notion that a belief in self-reliance cannot coexist with a spirit of generosity is crap. In fact, one is far less likely to find a spirit of generosity among the advocates of governmentally-required "compassion".

[W]hen you align yourself exclusively with one party, and weaponize yourself in that party's cause, you're going to pay the price when the other party is in power. That's the price you pay for whoring yourself out.

My current goal is to change the way we think about antitrust and anti-monopoly.

In Europe, populism is sort of a dirty word, but we have this wonderful history of populism in America, including the abolitionist populists and the white and black populists working together in the nineteenth century.

New York City is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to climate change, so I see Keystone as the central threat to New York.

I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there's an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse.

The human race has susceptibility to harm but Mr.

Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record: he has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age.

It's not so much about the cause, it's about feeling superior to political opponents.

In elite, primarily white institutions, there are many blacks who have white wives. So much so that sometimes there is almost the assumption that I would be married to a white woman.

I was born in Columbia in 1954, the year the Supreme Court invalidated racial segregation in public schools. I visited frequently but did not live there.

The idea of a judgment of history is secularism's vain, meaningless, hopeless, pathetic attempt to devise a substitute for what the great Abrahamic traditions of faith know is the final judgment of almighty God, who is not an impersonal force. History is not God. God is God. History is not our judge. God is our Judge.