Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOThe prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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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I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
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.
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The difference is no less real because it is of degree.
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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 -
The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
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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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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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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.
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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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Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
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Justice, though due to the accused, is due the accuser also. The concept of fairness cannot be strained till it is narrowed to a filament. We are to keep our balance true.
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Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO