Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
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.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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 CARDOZO -
Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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 -
Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
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I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
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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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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO







