The difference is no less real because it is of degree.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOHistory 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.
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 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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Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
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Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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.
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Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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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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Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
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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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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
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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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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