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 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
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Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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It 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.
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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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The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
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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.
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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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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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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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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 final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
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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.
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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO