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The difference is no less real because it is of degree.

Benjamin Cardozo

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

Dark Mind Years
Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Destructive Unchecked Unrelieved
The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Competition Finals Law
Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Choices Inaction
Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Expression Form Freedom
History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Illuminating Past
Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Helping May Statutes
The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Eternity Eye Prophet
Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

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

Errors Growth Ingredient
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
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
The difference is no less real because it is of degree.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Degrees Differences Real
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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Decision Justice Taken
Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Opinion Significance Source
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 CARDOZO

Equality Erosion Liberty

The difference is no less real because it is of degree.

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The difference is no less real because it is of degree.

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