Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
BENJAMIN CARDOZORest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOHistory 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 CARDOZOLaw never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOJustice 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 CARDOZOProphecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZONot honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOEvery human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOI take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOIt 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 CARDOZOInaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOMethod is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThere are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO