The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe 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.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
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Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
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Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
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In the end the great truth will have been learned that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer that the prize (or rather, that the effort is the prize), the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigor of the game.
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The Constitution was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.
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The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.
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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.
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Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
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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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Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
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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.
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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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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.
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Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
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The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
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The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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The difference is no less real because it is of degree.
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No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.
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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.
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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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Justice, though due to the accused, is due the accuser also. The concept of fairness cannot be strained till it is narrowed to a filament. We are to keep our balance true.
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO