SAM ERVIN

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?

Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.

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.

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

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

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.

In other words, in order to capture criminals, the law enforcement agencies must act criminally—a little lawbreaking does wonders for law and order.

[Impoundment has become] a means whereby the White House can give effect to social goals of its own choosing by reallocating national resources in contravention of congressional dictates.

A school prayer amendment would confer upon public school boards a power the 1st Amendment now denies to Congress and the states, that is, the power to establish religion.

Our citizens do not know whom to believe, and many of them have concluded that all the processes of government have become so compromised that honest government has been rendered impossible.

Every American has the constitutional right not to be taxed or have his tax money expended for the establishment of a religion.

The President is entitled to keep secret those conversations which a President may have had with his aids for the purpose of advising him in his Constitutional duties. Executive privilege cannot cover crimes, for they are not Constitutional duties.

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

If Senator McCarthy believed those things when he said them about the Senate Committee then there is pretty solid ground to say that he ought to be expelled from the Senate for moral incapacity. If he put those things in there honestly believing them to be true, then he has evidently suffered gigantic mental delusions, and it may be argued with much force, that he should be expelled from the Senate for mental difficulty.

I am just a country lawyer from way down in North Carolina, and I probably make inquiries with a little bit more vigor than some of these high-falutin' city lawyers do.

I am one of the few men in public life who doesn't complain much about his treatment as the hands of the press. The press takes me to task every once in a while, but they have always been very kind, not attributing my hypocrisy to bad motives. They have always attributed it to a lack of mental capacity.

I asked for more information because I am unable to unscrew the inscrutable.

I believe in a wall between church and state so high that no one can climb over it.

I do not believe that the President has any powers at all except such as the Constitution expressly gives him or such as are necessarily inferred.

I do not believe that we [Congress] should allow him [the President] to nullify acts of Congress by executive fiat. There is not one syllable in the Constitution which authorizes the President to exercise such power.

I used to think the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were a few 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.

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.

If you don't think a television news show represents the truth, you can turn off your TV. If you don't think a magazine represents the truth, you can cancel your subscription. You have the right to expose yourself to whatever information you want. But to have the government prescribing what the truth is or limiting the information available for the citizen is contrary to the 1st Amendment.

I think the great thing about the 1st Amendment is that it extends its rights to everyone. The wise and the foolish.

Law is not self-executing. Unfortunately, at times its execution rests in the hands of those who are faithless to it. And even when its enforcement is committed to those who revere it, law merely deters some human beings from offending, and punishes other human beings for offending. This does not make men good. This task can be performed only by ethics or religion or morality.