“Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.”

There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.

The final cause of law is the welfare of society.

The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.

Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action. Judges cannot escape that current any more than other mortals.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.

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.

Law never is, but is always about to be.

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.

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.

Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.

The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.

The difference is no less real because it is of degree.

Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.

One person I have to make good: Myself. But my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy if I may.

For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

For every discouragement has been allowed to come to us in order that through it we may be cast in utter helplessness at the Saviour’s feet.

Your family immigrated to this country – whether they came over on the Mayflower or whether they came over on a raft last year.

We may not know who is craft beer but we sure as hell will know what is craft beer by who isn’t.

We may switch presidents, but we`re just going to switch legs and keep on marching.

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

It may be said that his wit shines at the expense of his memory.