Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
History or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity – please observe, a plodding mediocrity – for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO