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

Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.

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.

Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body.

The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.

The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.

Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.

Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.

Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.

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.

Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.

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

Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.

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.

The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.

I’m under no illusion that there are things about me that I’d like to change. I just accept who I am, and I’m proud of it.

Base your happiness on being real, not on illusions and expectations.

Today, when I saw you, I realized that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion.

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.

Our society nurtures the illusion that all the rewards go to the people who are perfect. But many of us are finding out that trying to be perfect is costly.

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one.

The secret to film is that it’s an illusion.