Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
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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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
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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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Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
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Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
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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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We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.
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The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
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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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The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
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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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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO