John Roberts Quotes

• If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me, ... But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy is going to win because my obligation is to the Constitution.

  John Roberts

  Winning, Guy, Littles

  35 Copy quote

• By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.

  John Roberts

  Government, Abuse, Ordinary

  34 Copy quote

• The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

  John Roberts

  Race, Politics, Way

  "Divided court rejects school diversity plans" by Bill Mears, edition.cnn.com. June 28, 2007.

  37 Copy quote

• I find that when I tell lawyer jokes to a mixed audience, the lawyers don't think they're funny and the non-lawyers don't think they're jokes.

  John Roberts

  Thinking, Lawyer, Audience

  31 Copy quote

• Trivial facts are often the best hints to what is going on.

  John Roberts

  Society, Hints, Facts

  16 Copy quote

• I think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge. It's the difference between being a judge and being a law professor.

  John Roberts

  Thinking, Views, Law

  21 Copy quote

• The States are separate and independent sovereigns. Sometimes they need to act like it.

  John Roberts

  Independent, Needs, Sometimes

  17 Copy quote

• An important function of the Supreme Court is to provide guidance, .. As a lower court judge, I appreciate clear guidance from the Supreme Court.

  John Roberts

  Court Judges, Appreciate, Judging

  10 Copy quote

• The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.

  John Roberts

  Kings, Law, People

  12 Copy quote

• Global warming may be a 'crisis,' even 'the most pressing environmental problem of our time.' ... Indeed, it may ultimately affect nearly everyone on the planet in some potentially adverse way, and it may be that governments have done too little to address it. It is not a problem, however, that has escaped the attention of policymakers in the Executive and Legislative Branches of our Government, who continue to consider regulatory, legislative, and treaty-based means of addressing global climate change.

  John Roberts

  Mean, Government, Environmental

  12 Copy quote

• We cannot deny that our decision today will have an impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat crime. Cell phones have become important tools in facilitating coordination and communication among members of criminal enterprises, and can provide valuable incriminating information about dangerous criminals. Privacy comes at a cost.

  John Roberts

  Communication, Technology, Cells

  12 Copy quote

• The Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.

  John Roberts

  Care, May, Pay

  "US supreme court surprises with decision to uphold healthcare reform" by Chris McGreal, www.theguardian.com. June 28, 2012.

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• I'm not sure that it's right to view this as excluding a particular group. When the institution of marriage developed historically, people didn't get around and say, 'Let's have this institution, but let's keep out homosexuals.' The institution developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, didn't include homosexual couples.

  John Roberts

  Couple, Gay, Views

  15 Copy quote

• If we had enough cadaver organs to go around we wouldn't do living donor liver transplants because one is we don't want to put a donor at risk, but the second is that it's a more difficult surgery for the recipient because you're getting a piece of a liver rather than a whole liver. It takes you longer to recover, and it has more complications related to where we sew together the blood vessels and the bile ducts.

  John Roberts

  Blood, Risk, Together

  Source: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org

  8 Copy quote

• Senator, my answer is that the independence and integrity of the Supreme Court requires that nominees before this committee for a position on that court not forecast, give predictions, give hints, about how they might rule in cases that might come before the Supreme Court,.

  John Roberts

  Integrity, Giving, Independence

  7 Copy quote

• If it's a situation in which the public is being given access, you can't discriminate against the media and say, as a general matter, that the media don't have access, because their access rights, of course, correspond with those of the public.

  John Roberts

  Rights, Media, Matter

  "Roberts sidesteps questions on pledge, eminent domain" by Bill Mears, edition.cnn.com. September 15, 2005.

  7 Copy quote

• Sometimes it’s just surreal out there, while you’re running a marathon. People just standing out in the cold, even the rain, cheering for you, blasting music for you. It’s an awesome show of camaraderie and community.

  John Roberts

  Running, Cheer, Rain

  10 Copy quote

• There are many different causes of the scarring. Viruses are common. Hepatitis B, hepatitis C, what we call autoimmune diseases where the body attacks the liver itself such as primary biliary cirrhosis is an autoimmune disease; sclerosing cholangitis is an autoimmune disease; and so those diseases where the liver is being destroyed by either the virus or an autoimmune disease, it can only scar, and why it doesn't regenerate has to do with the fact that there is this ongoing scar tissue that blocks that regeneration.

  John Roberts

  Block, Viruses, Different

  Source: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org

  11 Copy quote

• You don't doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same sex-marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you?... As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case.

  John Roberts

  Sex, Powerful, Fall

  4 Copy quote

• There is a risk of death associated with donating a piece of liver. It's about one in 500 for the risk of death. The risk of death of donating a kidney is about one in 3000, so this is a riskier operation than donating a kidney. The stakes are usually higher for the recipient of the transplant because unlike kidney failure, where you have a dialysis machine, in liver failure we don't have that kind of machine that allows a patient to survive until they can get a cadaver organ.

  John Roberts

  Risk, Kidneys, Cadavers

  Source: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org

  11 Copy quote

• Pretty much everybody knows there are not enough organs for all of those patients who need to get transplants, and what happens is, is that organs are actually directed in liver transplantation to those patients who are the sickest. So the patients who have the greatest chance of dying in the next three months or so are the ones who get the priority for the liver transplant.

  John Roberts

  Priorities, Dying, Three

  Source: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org

  9 Copy quote

• End-stage liver disease refers to a liver that's failing, and a very high percentage of those livers are what we call cirrhotic, or the patient's liver has become cirrhotic, and what cirrhosis is, is the scarring of the liver tissue.

  John Roberts

  Tissues, Disease, Patient

  Source: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org

  7 Copy quote

• When a liver becomes cirrhotic, those are the common complications. We see that the patients have bleeding from their stomach and intestines. They have abdomens that become full of fluid. Their ankles swell with the same type of fluid, and they also can become confused and not themselves. Those are kind of the main things that we see when people get end-stage liver disease and have cirrhosis.

  John Roberts

  Confused, People, Ankles

  Source: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org

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• We are always in awe of what the donors have done in terms of providing of themselves to the recipients. It really is a heroic act because people take on themselves not only a risk of death but also pain-and-suffering in order for their loved one to get the benefit of the liver transplant.

  John Roberts

  Pain, Order, People

  Source: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org

  5 Copy quote

• When we think about living donor transplant, what we're banking on is the ability of the liver to regenerate itself. Now, it's not the same sort of regeneration we think about with the starfish where we cut off the arm and it grows a new arm. With the liver, what happens is the remaining liver gets bigger, and your body knows the size of the liver that it needs, and when it recognizes that there is not enough liver, it sends nutrients and signals to the liver and says "get bigger."

  John Roberts

  Cutting, Thinking, Needs

  Source: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org

  15 Copy quote

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