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.
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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Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
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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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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.
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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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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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Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
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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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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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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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The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
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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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The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
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