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 CARDOZOThe great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
-
-
Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
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 -
History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The Constitution was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.
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 -
Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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 CARDOZO -
Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
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