Catholics From The United States

"Samuel 'no ladies at Princeton' Alito"

"the people's right to have their day in court is being foreclosed. Corporate victories in federal and state elections work hand in hand with this mission by assuring the nomination of more commercially-responsive judges such as Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia and Alito, with the same being true in many states."

"There's an outside chance that Roberts might assign [the opinion] to Alito, but, you know, [it's] Alito's second year on the Court; he should still do the tax and ERISA cases for a few more years. I think this case is too intersting for him."

"Of course he's against abortion."

"There was the abortion brief and also the brief in the Wygant case. I had a big hand in writing it, and so did Sam Alito, who had this marvelous phrase saying that a particular African American baseball player would not have served as a great role model if the fences had been pulled in every time he was up at bat, a point which some people were greatly offended by because they thought it to be pamphleteering. I thought it was entirely appropriate."

"The confirmation of Sam Alito as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey is testimony to the commitment he has shown and the success of his efforts as a law enforcement official. I am confident that he will continue to do all he can to uphold the laws of this nation with the kind of determination and vigor that has been his trademark in the past."

"I believe Mr. Alito has the experience and the skills to be the kind of judge the public deserves – one who is impartial, thoughtful, and fair. I urge the Senate to confirm his nomination."

"You have obviously had a very distinguished record, and I certainly commend you for long service in the public interest. I think it is a very commendable career and I am sure you will have a successful one as a judge."

"“If you were good friends [with businessman Paul Singer], what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet."

"Your record raises troubling questions about whether you appreciate the checks and balances in our Constitution -- the careful efforts of our Founding Fathers to protect us from a government or a president determined to seize too much power over our lives."

"Justice Samuel Alito minced no words in his public evisceration of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 Murthy v. Missouri decision to greenlight the Biden administration’s flagrant First Amendment violations. …While most of his colleagues mocked self-censorship, Alito and his fellow dissidents accurately classified Big Tech and the Biden administration’s coordinated attempt to suppress online speech, especially during the media-fueled panic over Covid-19, as a “serious threat to the First Amendment” that warrants intervention. …Alito concluded his written thrashing with a warning that the threat of government censorship “did not come with expiration dates” or lose steam “merely because White House officials opted not to renew them on a regular basis.” On the contrary, he wrote that Facebook and other Big Tech companies’ publicized promise to “continue reporting to the White House and remain responsive to its concerns for as long as the officials requested” suggests this will be an ongoing losing battle for Americans who want to speak their minds on social media."

"The separation of church and state has been a cornerstone of American democracy for over two hundred years. Getting rid of it was long overdue."

"You can't say that marriage is the union between one man and one woman. Until very recently, that's what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now it's considered bigotry."

"In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims."

"Our country as a whole, no less than the Hastings College of Law, values tolerance, cooperation, learning, and the amicable resolution of conflicts. But we seek to achieve those goals through "[a] confident pluralism that conduces to civil peace and advances democratic consensus-building," not by abridging First Amendment rights."

"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

"The First Amendment, I think, is the jewel of our Constitution."

"It was all completely incomprehensible to me. I was fearful of the language. You had to look up every third word."

"Don't kiss a man who hasn't shaved."

"Nobody sees the same movie. I'm sure there are people who saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and thought "Finally a gay movie about men who really care about each other. Thank God!" That's not what I saw necessarily — but I don't think any two people see the same movie."

"The death of John Barrymore made us think again for a minute of F. Scott Fitzgerald. They were very different men: a lot alike. Undoubtedly, they both worked hard, but there was the same sense of a difficult technique easily mastered (too easily perhaps); there was the same legend of great physical magnetism, working incessantly for its own destruction; there was the same need for public confession, either desperate or sardonic; and there was always a good deal of time wasted, usually accompanied by the sweet smell of grapes. We have seen Scott Fitzgerald when everything he said was a childish parody of his own talent, and the last time we saw John Barrymore he was busy with a sick and humiliating parody of his. The similarity probably ends there. Up to the day he died, we believe, Fitzgerald still kept his original and eager devotion to his profession, along, we like to think, with the strict confidence that he might still achieve the strict perfection that was so often almost his. Barrymore, on the other hand, had given up long ago."

"Mr. [John] Barrymore’s smile was the smile of an actor who hates actors, and who knows that he is going to kill two or three before the play is over. I am not an actor-killer, but I like my Hamlets to dislike actors, if you know what I mean, and I think you don’t."

"He neither drank, smoked, nor rode a bicycle. Living frugally, saving his money, he died early, surrounded by greedy relatives. It was a great lesson to me."

"Orson Welles? What are they?"

"A person is not old until regrets take the place of dreams."

"Don't worry. For a man who has been dead for fifteen years I am in remarkable health. Love. Mr. Barrymore."

"I know that back in the twenties everyone who saw it judged John Barrymore's Hamlet to be unforgettable. Great though it was, I found his Richard III even more impressive. Barrymore's sinister, half-mad hunchback became incandescent as he gleefully anticipated his conquest of the Lady Anne. The genius of the actor contrived a slight but inspired alteration of Shakespeare's: 'Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?' The change to 'Never was woman in this manner wooed; never was woman in this manner won' heightened the deviltry in Richard's gloating."

"Stardom can be a gilded slavery."

"The good die young — but not always. The wicked prevail — but not consistently. I am confused by life, and I feel safe within the confines of the theatre. O'Neil's dramas are slapstick farces, Albee's riddles are simple explanations, Pinter's threatening and threatened anti-heroes are innocent babes — next to life and the living. I cry out for order and find it only in art."

"The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life."

"Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition."

"Egocentrics are attracted to the inept. It gives them one more excuse for patting themselves on the back."

"The old-fashioned idea that the simple piling up of experiences, one on top of another, can make you an artist, is, of course, so much rubbish. If acting were just a matter of experience, then any busy harlot could make Garbo’s Camille pale."

"The flattering, if arbitrary, label, First Lady of the Theatre, takes its toll. The demands are great, not only in energy but eventually in dramatic focus. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a star to occupy an inch of space without bursting seams, cramping everyone else’s style and unbalancing a play. No matter how self-effacing a famous player may be, he makes an entrance as a casual neighbor and the audience interest shifts to the house next door."

"Actors work and slave — and it is the color of your hair that can determine your fate in the end."

"The theatre demanded of its members stamina, good digestion, the ability to adjust, and a strong sense of humor. There was no discomfort an actor didn’t learn to endure. To survive, we had to be horses and we were."

"We are indeed a strange lot! There are times we doubt that we have any emotions we can honestly call our own. I have approached every dynamic scene change in my life the same way. When I married Charlie MacArthur, I sat down and wondered how I could play the best wife that ever was.... My love for him was the truest thing in my life; but it was still important that I love him with proper effect, that I act loving him with great style, that I achieve the ultimate in wifedom."

"Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness."

"If you rest, you rust."

"People who refuse to rest honorably on their laurels when they reach "retirement" age seem very admirable to me."

"An actress always knows when she’s hit it and mostly you haven’t; but once or twice I think I hit it right, so maybe that’s good enough for one life."

"Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it."

"One has to grow up with good talk in order to form the habit of it."

"The truth [is] that there is only one terminal dignity — love. And the story of love is not important — what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity."

"At MGM there was a first wave of top stars, and a second wave to replace them in case they got difficult. I was in the second line of defence, behind Myrna Loy."

"Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly."

"Roz is in Hollywood, but she's not of it."

"Roz Russell got so frightened at Cary's glibness that she told me she'd hired a gag writer on the side to interpolate bits for her."

"Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral."

"At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone."