Jurists

"As Acting President and Vice President, he walked with Kings, Presidents and Prime Ministers, but never lost the common touch. He was always approachable and was kindliness to all. He brought to his chamber work, in his Opinions and in arbitrations, an understanding and humanity, and gave satisfaction to all."

"The pages of the Law Reports reflect as much his legal learning and contribution to the development of the law, as his erudition; his judgments were all written with elegance and were often infused with the appropriate literary allusion."

"He was a very warm, sincere and sensitive family man and friend."

"He was a man of many parts – Law, Literature, Public Affairs, International Affairs and Education. In the field of Law he held all offices which any lawyer can aspire to hold – Government Pleader; Advocate General of C.P. & Berar; Judge of the Nagpur High Court; Chief Justice of the Nagpur, High Court; Judge of the Supreme Court and culminating as the Chief Justice of India. He served as a Judge for 25 years."

"He had been an extremely thorough and patient Judge with unremitting industry and keen sense to discover truth and do justice. Law, liberty and justice were upheld with consummate ability and independence by His Lordship. On public controversies, some of his judgments are thought provoking. He disputed the correctness of any attempt to whittle down fundamental rights while making it clear that the right to property was not forever sacrosanct. The distinction between the law and order and the public order, has been brought out succinctly in his reported judgments."

"His Judgment in E. M. S. Namboodripad v. T.N. Nambiar (AIR 1970 SC 2015) illustrates his deep study of the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Indeed, in the course of the said judgment, he pointed out how Communists in our country distorted the approach of those eminent men."

"In Ranjit D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra (AIR 1968 SC 881), he declared the law on the subject as to when a book can be regarded as obscene. The Judgment laid down important tests of obscenity and their application to the well-known book "Lady Chatterley's Lover" written by Lawrence shows his deep insight into law and literature."

"In his leading majority judgment in Madhav Rao Scindia v. Union of India (AIR 1971 SC 530), popularly known as Privy Purse case, he held that the Order of the President directing that Madhavrao Scindia would cease to be recognised as the Ruler of Gwalior on and with effect from the date of the said order was ultra virus. This declaration of law resulted in restoration of the Privy Purses received by the Rulers and also ensured continuance of their personal privileges."

"In his concurring judgment in Golaknath v. State of Punjab (AIR 1967 SC 1643), he held that fundamental rights are outside the amendatory process, if the amendment seeks to abridge or take away any of the rights, and that for abridging or taking away fundamental rights, a constituent body will have to be convoked."

"During his long tenure in the Supreme Court, he was a party to and author of a number of landmark judgments."

"He was a warm and friendly person who could mix with one and all on even terms."

"He was sworn in as the Acting President of India on 20th July 1969 and served in that capacity till late V. V. Giri was sworn in as the duly elected President of the Republic. After his retirement as the Chief Justice of India, he was unanimously elected as the Vice President of India as a result of a consensus amongst different political parties and occupied that high office with distinction from 1979 to 1984."

"As Vice President, he presided over the Rajya Sabha and conducted its proceedings with great dexterity and wisdom. During his tenure as Vice President, he again acted as the President in 1982."

"If Apple wants to be a real leader, it should be fostering innovation and competition, rather than acting as a jealous and arbitrary feudal lord."

"We must bear our cross…not because it is sweet to suffer, but because the pain and suffering are as nothing compared with the greatness of the issues involved."

"His judgements are like learned essays on Hindu society being based on consideration of the Sruti-Smriti, the Puranas, History, and the most important English Judgments'"

"Profound and sympathetic judge possessed of the highest perspective faculties, and inspired with an intense desire to do right. His opinion was of the greatest value to his colleagues, and his decisions will stand in the future as a monument of his erudition and learning."

"This gem of learning belongs not merely to the Brahman class and to Poona city; and asking “Who is to be called the true people’s leader, if not Ranade?""

"Thought that the discourses were everything – the place where they were delivered was nothing. He wanted his ideas to reach his countrymenand he had no objection to going wherever they were assembled, provided he got an opportunity to speak to them."

"It is no exaggeration to say that younger men who come in personal contact with him feeling as in a holy presence, not only uttering nothing base, but afraid of even of thinking unworthy thoughts, while in his company."

"At about 4 AM....I was suddenly roused by some singing in the carriage, and, on opening my eyes, I saw Mr. Ranade sitting up and singing two abhangs of Tukaram, again and again and striking his hands together by way of accompaniment. The voice by no means musical, but the fervor with which he was singing was so great that I felt filled through and through and I too, could not help sitting up and listening."

"I think, my Lord, if ever an Indian in these days deserved to have a memorial voted to him by his loving ,greatfull and sorrow-stricken countrymen, unquestionably that Indian was the late Mr Ranade."

"You cannot be liberal by halves. You cannot be liberal in politics and conservative in religion. The heart and the head must go together. You cannot cultivate your intellect, enrich your mind, enlarge the sphere of your political rights and privileges, and at the same time keep your hearts closed and cramped. It is an idle dream to expect men to remain enchained and enshackled in their own superstition and social evils, while they are struggling hard to win rights and privileges from their rulers. Before long these vain dreamers will find their dreams lost."

"The preamble to the Regulation says that women were employed wholesale to entice and take away the wives or female children for purposes of prostitution, and it was common practice among husbands and fathers to desert their families and children. Public conscience there was none, and in the absence of conscience it was futile to expect moral indignation against the social wrongs. Indeed the Brahmins were engaged in defending every wrong for the simple reason that they lived on them. They defended Untouchability which condemned millions to the lot of the helot. They defended caste, they defended female child marriage and they defended enforced widowhood—the two great props of the Caste system. They defended the burning of widows, and they defended the social system of graded inequality with its rule of hypergamy which led the Rajputs to kill in their thousands the daughters that were born to them. What shames! What wrongs! Can such a Society show its face before civilized nations? Can such a society hope to survive?"

"I profess implicit faith in two articles of my creed. This country of ours is the true land of promise. This race of ours is the chosen race."

"We have above all to learn what is to bear and forbear-to bear ridicule, insults, even personal injuries at times, and forebear from returning abuse for abuse. In the words of the Prophet of Nazareth, we have to take up the cross, not because it is pleasant to be persecuted, but because the pain and injury are as nothing by the side of the principle for which they are endured."

"All the love that in Christian lands circles round the life of death of Christ Jesus has been in India freely poured upon the intense realization of the every day presence of the Supreme God in the heart in a way more convincing than eyes or ears or the sense of touch can realize. This constitutes the glory of the saints and it is a possession which is treasured by our people, high and low, men and women, as a solace in life beyond value."

"The dreary alternative of agnosticism, which the young students are taught to accept as the final word of science on the grave mysteries of life and thought, and man’s hopes of personal communion with God are laughed away to make room for an inane faith in evolution and the law of collective development and progress....Hindu students especially need the strengthening influence which faith in God, and in Conscience as His voice in the human heart alone, can give. The national mind can not live in agnosticism. The experiment was tried once on a large scale by the greatest moral teacher of this or any other age. The failure of Buddhism is a warning that such teaching can have no hold on the national thought."

"We are but artless folk and not expert in rhythm, time, and tune, but that does not matter. He for whom we sing our hymns understands them all, and he pays no attention to our deficiencies of execution."

"This is the land of religion, Be it be for good or for evil, we cannot do without religion. Religious thoughts are in our blood. If we try to flee from it, it will pursue us."

"What obstacle is there apart from the religious one. There is plenty to do in the world without it."

"...from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife."

"The body of the legal system needs a soul and sometimes even an additional soul"

"the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty enacted in by the Knesset in 1992, to anchor in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state two strands – the Jewish heritage and the democratic tradition... and it is the task of the courts to interweave them into the synthesis indicated by the Basic Law"

"[O]ur constitutions of government have declared that all men are born free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are the right of enjoying their lives, liberties, and property, and of seeking and obtaining their own safety and happiness. May not the miserable African ask, "Am I not a man and a brother?""

"Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state government, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions; and the Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship."

"The real object of the First Amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and of the subversion of the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age. The history of the parent country had afforded the most solemn warnings and melancholy instructions on this head; and even New England, the land of the persecuted puritans, as well as other colonies, where the Church of England had maintained its superiority, would furnish out a chapter, as full of the darkest bigotry and intolerance, as any, which should be found to disgrace the pages of foreign annals. Apostacy, heresy, and nonconformity had been standard crimes for public appeals, to kindle the flames of persecution, and apologize for the most atrocious triumphs over innocence and virtue."

"Article VI, paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution declares, that 'no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.' This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any religious test, or affirmation. It had a higher objective: to cut off for ever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government."

"Indeed, in a free government, almost all other rights would become utterly worthless, if the government possessed an uncontrollable power over the private fortune of every citizen."

"The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights."

"Every free man has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this is to destroy the freedom of the press."

"If these Commentaries shall but inspire in the rising generation a more ardent love of their country, an unquenchable thirst for liberty, and a profound reverence for the constitution and the union, then they will have accomplished all that their author ought to desire. Let the American youth never forget that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capable, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence. The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid; its compartments are beautiful as well as useful; its arrangements are full of wisdom and order; and its defences are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, THE PEOPLE. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them."

"The patent act uses the phrase 'useful invention' merely incidentally. ... All that the law requires is, that the invention should not be frivolous or injurious to the well-being, good policy, or sound morals of society. The word 'useful,' therefore, is incorporated into the act in contradistinction to mischievous or immoral. For instance, a new invention to poison people, or to promote debauchery, or to facilitate private assassination, is not a patentable invention. But if the invention steers wide of these objections, whether it be more or less useful is a circumstance very material to the interests of the patentee, but of no importance to the public. If it be not so extensively useful, it will silently sink into contempt and disregard."

"The Constitution unavoidably deals in general language. It did not suit the purposes of the people, in framing this great charter of our liberties, to provide for minute specifications of its powers, or to declare the means by which those powers should be carried into execution. It was foreseen that this would be a perilous and difficult, if not an impracticable, task. The instrument was not intended to provide merely for the exigencies of a few years, but was to endure through a long lapse of ages, the events of which were locked up in the inscrutable purposes of Providence."

"I am not able to understand how it can be correctly said in a legal sense, that an action will not lie even in the case of a wrong or a violation of a right, unless it is followed by some perceptible damage which can be established as a matter of fact; in other words, that injuria sine damno is not actionable. On the contrary, from my earliest reading I have considered it laid up among the very elements of the common law, that wherever there is a wrong there is a remedy to redress it; and that every injury imports damage in the nature of it; and if no other damage is established, the party injured is entitled to a verdict for nominal damages."

"He who seeks equity must do equity."

"Be brief, be pointed, let your matter stand Lucid in order, solid and at hand; Spend not your words on trifles but condense; Strike with the mass of thought, not drops of sense; Press to close with vigor, once begun, And leave, (how hard the task!) leave off, when done."

"I will not say with Lord Hale, that "the law will admit of no rival, and nothing to go even with it;" but I will say, that it is a jealous mistress, and requires a long and constant courtship. It is not to be won by trifling favours, but by a lavish homage."

"It has often been matter of regret in modern times that, in the construction of the Statute of Limitations, the decisions had not proceeded upon principles better adapted to carry into effect the real objects of the Statute; that instead of being viewed in an unfavourable light as an unjust and discreditable defence, it had not received such support as would have made it what it was intended to be, emphatically a Statute of repose. It is a wise and beneficial law, not designed merely to raise a presumption of payment of a just debt from lapse of time, but to afford security against stale demands after the true state of the transaction may be forgotten, or be incapable of explanation by reason of the death or removal of witnesses."

"Here shall the Press the People's right maintain, Unawed by influence and unbribed by gain; Here Patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw, Pledged to Religion, Liberty, and Law."