The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOFreedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct on the faith of the pronouncement.
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The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
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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.
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
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No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.
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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
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Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
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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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Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.
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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.
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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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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 difference is no less real because it is of degree.
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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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO