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 CARDOZOIn 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.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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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.
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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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The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
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The Constitution was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.
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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.
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The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
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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.
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Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
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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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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
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Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO