The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.
BENJAMIN CARDOZODanger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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With traps and obstacles and hazards confronting us on every hand, only blindness or indifference will fail to turn in all humility, for guidance or for warning, to the study of examples.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
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The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
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Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
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Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances. Substitute statute for decision, and you shift the center of authority, but add no quota of inspired wisdom.
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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
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We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.
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It is for ordinary minds, not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of administrative convenience, or practical expediency, and not in rules of logic.
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Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body.
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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO