Samuel Alito Thinking Quotations

I think that the legitimacy of the court would be undermined in any case if the court made a decision based on its perception of public opinion.

I think that Congress' ability to reason is fully equal to that of the judiciary.

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

When I became a judge, I stopped being a practicing attorney. And that was a big change in role.The role of a practicing attorney is to achieve a desirable result for the client in the particular case at hand. But a judge can't think that way. A judge can't have any agenda, a judge can't have any preferred outcome in any particular case and a judge certainly doesn't have a client.

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

I've learned a lot during my years on the 3rd Circuit, particularly, I think, about the way in which a judge should go about the work of judging. I've learned by doing, by sitting on all of these cases. And I think I've also learned from the examples of some really remarkable colleagues.

A generation earlier, I think that somebody from my background probably would not have felt fully comfortable at a college like Princeton. But, by the time I graduated from high school, things had changed.

I know that some poor immigrants from that era had unrealistic expectations and were disappointed, but I don't think my grandparents were disappointed at all, even though they experienced some very hard times during the Great Depression.

I think that what my parents taught me about hard work, optimism and education still holds true.