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The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.

Benjamin Cardozo

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

Example Hands Humility
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

Decision Justice Taken
The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Judging Knights Roaming
Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Destructive Unchecked Unrelieved
The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Duty Obeyed Perceived Risk
Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Honest Poor Substitutes
The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Names Taxes Validity
Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Errors Growth Ingredient
The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Competition Finals Law
Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Helping May Statutes
Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Choices Inaction
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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Balance Fairness Justice
Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Always Law never
History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Illuminating Past
Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Opinion Significance Source
The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Law Limitation Running

The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.

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The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.

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