History 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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOIn 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.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
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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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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
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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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Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
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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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The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
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Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
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The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
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Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
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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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Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO