Sam Ervin Quotations

I'm not going to let anybody come down at night like Nicodemus and whisper something in my ear that no one else can hear. That is not executive privilege; it is poppycock.

I'll have you understand I am running this court, and the law hasn't got a damn thing to do with it!

If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were, in effect, breaking into the home of every citizen.

Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion.

Divine right went out with the American Revolution and doesn't belong to the White House aides. What meat do they eat that makes them grow so great?

If religious freedom is to endure in America, the responsibility for teaching religion to public school children must be left to the homes and churches of our land, where this responsibility rightfully belongs. It must not be assumed by the government through the agency of the public school system.

Government is contemptuous of true religion when it confiscates the taxes of Caesar to finance the things of God.

What James Madison and the other men of his generation had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment was that there should be no official relationship of any character between government and any church or many churches, and no levying of taxes for the support of any church, or many churches, or all churches, or any institution conducted by any of them.

I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.

A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people.

The Supreme Court has made God unconstitutional.

A school prayer amendment would confer upon public school boards a power the First Amendment now denies to Congress and the states, that is, the power to establish religion.

Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.

The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.

Religious faith is not a storm cellar to which men and women can flee for refuge from the storms of life. It is instead, an inner spiritual strength which enables them to face those storms with hope and serenity.

Humor makes our heavy burdens light and smoothes the rough spots in our pathways.

There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes or makes it the official duty of a president to have anything to do with criminal activities.

A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.

I believe in a wall between church and state so high that no one can climb over it. When religion controls government, political liberty dies; and when government controls religion, religious liberty perishes. Every American has the constitutional right not to be taxed or have his tax money expended for the establishment of religion. For too long the issue of government aid to church related organizations has been a divisive force in our society and in the Congress. It has erected communication barriers among our religions and fostered intolerance.

I've always been worried about people who are willing to work for nothing. Sometimes that's all you get from them, nothing.

Recalling an old magistrate's words to a young attorney, The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella; But chiefly on the just, because The unjust steals the just's umbrella.

When religion controls government, political liberty dies; and when government controls religion, religious liberty perishes.