Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
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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The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
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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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The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
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Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.
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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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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
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The difference is no less real because it is of degree.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
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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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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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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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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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Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
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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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO