The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
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Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
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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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No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.
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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.
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I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
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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.
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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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Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
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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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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
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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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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO