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 CARDOZONo judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
-
-
The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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 CARDOZO -
Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
What 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 CARDOZO -
The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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 -
The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO