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 CARDOZOEvery human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
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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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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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Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
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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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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.
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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body.
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
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The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
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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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Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO