Benjamin Cardozo Quotes

In our worship of certainty we must distinguish between the sound certainty and the sham, between what is gold and what is tinsel; and then, when certainty is attained, we must remember that it is not the only good; that we can buy it at too high a price; that there is danger in perpetual quiescence as well as in perpetual motion; and that a compromise must be found in a principle of growth.

The risk to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed.

The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.

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.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

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.

Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.

The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.

Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.

The repetition of a catchword can hold analysis in fetters for fifty years or more.

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.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.

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.

In 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 truly characteristic of dissent is a dignity, an elevation, of mood and thought and phrase. Deep conviction and warm feeling are saying their last say with knowledge that the cause is lost. The voice of the majority may be that of force triumphant, content with the plaudits of the hour, and recking little of the morrow. The dissenter speaks to the future, and his voice is pitched to a key that will carry through the years.

Law never is, but is always about to be.

Danger invites rescue ... The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.

The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.

I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.

The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet, challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that keeps the blood at heat. Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb of innocence ... Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of adventurous youth.

The final cause of law is the welfare of society.

Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.