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 CARDOZOFraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
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With traps and obstacles and hazards confronting us on every hand, only blindness or indifference will fail to turn in all humility, for guidance or for warning, to the study of examples.
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Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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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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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.
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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 great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.
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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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The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
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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.
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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.
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Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO