Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
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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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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The difference is no less real because it is of degree.
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Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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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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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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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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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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Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
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The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
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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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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.
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I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
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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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Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO