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We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.

Benjamin Cardozo

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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Distance Doe Joy
Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Choices Inaction
The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Age Constitution Significance
Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Always Law never
The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Competition Finals Law
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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Example Hands Humility
The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Heroic Hours Trumpet
It is for ordinary minds, not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of administrative convenience, or practical expediency, and not in rules of logic.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Justice Mind Ordinary
Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Done Revision Tasks
The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Duty Obeyed Perceived Risk
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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Confidence Giving Judging Philosophy
There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Art Dresses Fashion
No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Issue Judicial Raise Sysdtem
Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Danger May Rescue
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

Judging Justice Law
Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Errors Growth Ingredient

We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.

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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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