Harold H. Greene

“They say I am a regulator and I think it is just an effort not to comply with the decree. I do not do anything except what the decree requires me to do.”

“Once I was standing in line to buy a telephone and Senator Wirth was in line with me. The next day the New York Times reported that we'd both purchased telephones and what price we'd paid!”

“For a while, even in the house of good friends for dinner or for cocktails, they would really be upset. They thought I had single-handedly destroyed the best phone service in the world.”

“Defendants are being evaluated based on numerical grid without any aggravating circumstances being considered. The effect has been to transfer the disparity from the judge to the prosecutor allowing for a great deal of leeway on indictments.”

“Competition is good and has served us well.”

“The traditional practice is that the justices don't ask the attorney general any questions, so as not to embarrass him. But Bobby Kennedy had let them know that he didn't mind if they asked him questions and they did.”

“If members of the security apparatus could, with impunity, keep from those elected by the people that which they're entitled to know - or worse, feed false information - those who could control the classified data could be the real decision makers.”

“With competition everyone has to try harder.”

“I enjoyed the administrative work because it involved working with Congress, city council, and the mayor. I had never been a politician so it was fun - learning political maneuvering.”

“You can't just lecture the poor that they shouldn't riot or go to extremes. You have to make the means of legal redress available.”

“People are intimidated in court, and I try to make them more comfortable.”

“I could see flames from the windows of my chambers. For the next three or four days we had major rioting here in Washington and I stayed at the court day and night.”

“I think it does work. The fact that the law is there and injustices can be rectified, I think has a lot to do with the fact that the people in this country aren't as frustrated as they are in some of these places in Eastern Europe and don't resort to violent revolution.”

“The impression I have of Justice Warren is that he was looking for the just result in a case regardless of fixed dogma or principles and I like to think that I'm in that mold.”

“There would be nights when I would wake up and couldn't get back to sleep. So I would go downstairs and write. The staff had a pool going on how many pages of typing I would bring in here in the morning.”

“I don't want to be influenced by outside opinion.”

“I took the position from day one that it was the right decree, that the modifications I made to the decree were proper, that the correct outcome had been obtained, and that in due time all of that would become apparent. And it has become apparent.”

“The Sherman Act is similar in the economics sphere to the Bill of Rights in the personal sphere.”

“Frequently you have a clash between the more sterile letter of the law and the justice that underlies it, and I think one of the things I've been trying more or less, where it was possible, is to go with the justice rather than the letter of the law.”

“I don't think a judge should be too much involved in outside activities.”