The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOJustice, 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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOFreedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOJustice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOWhat 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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOIn 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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOInaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
BENJAMIN CARDOZORest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe 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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOIt is for ordinary minds, not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of administrative convenience, or practical expediency, and not in rules of logic.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe 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 CARDOZOThere are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOWe seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOJustice 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 CARDOZOThe final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO