Quotes by William Brennan

• Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but is serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment.
• If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion.
• Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it.
• Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics.
• The principle inherent in the clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment.
• We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so, we dilute the freedom this cherished emblem represents.
• The quest for freedom, dignity, and the rights of man will never end.