Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action. Judges cannot escape that current any more than other mortals.
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The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
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Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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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The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
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The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
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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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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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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO







