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 CARDOZOThe prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.
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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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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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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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The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
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What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct on the faith of the pronouncement.
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Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.
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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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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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Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
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Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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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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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO






