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Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.

Benjamin Cardozo

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Illuminating Past
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

Gain Honesty Men
Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Helping May Statutes
Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Expression Form Freedom
The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Duty Obeyed Perceived Risk
Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Always Law never
There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Art Dresses Fashion
Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Opinion Significance Source
The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Eternity Eye Prophet
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
Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Errors Growth Ingredient
No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Issue Judicial Raise Sysdtem
Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Inspiration Inspirational Technique
Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Honest Poor Substitutes
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

Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.

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Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.

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