Felix Frankfurter
The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.Collection: Power
The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.Collection: Strength
To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.Collection: Legal
Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.Collection: Wisdom
It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.Collection: History
Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.Collection: Age
Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.Collection: Freedom
The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.Collection: History
It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.
Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.
Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.
All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.
Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.
As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.
It simply is not true that war never settles anything.
The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.
Anybody can decide a question if only a single principle is in controversy.
It must take account of what it decrees for today in order that today may not paralyze tomorrow.
It is anomalous to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.
The mode by which the inevitable is reached is effort.
I came into the world a Jew, and although I did not live my life entirely as a Jew, I think it is fitting that I should leave as a Jew. I don't want to turn my back on a great and noble heritage.
There can be no security where there is fear.
I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough.
We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.
If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.Collection: Mean
We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.Collection: Freedom
Anybody who is any good is different from anybody else.Collection: Individuality
Freedom of speech and of the press are essential to the enlightenment of a free people and in restraining those who wield power.Collection: People
Ultimately there can be no freedom for self unless it is vouchsafed for others; there can be no security where there is fear, and a democratic society presupposes confidence and candor in the relations of men with one another and eager collaboration for the larger ends of life instead of the pursuit of petty, selfish or vainglorious aims.Collection: Freedom
It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.Collection: Rights
It is hostile to a democratic system to involve the judiciary in the politics of the people.Collection: People
No office in the land is more important than that of being a citizen.Collection: Land
It is important not to give the appearance of a predisposed mind. And it is more important not to let the mind become predisposed.Collection: Giving
The most constructive way of resolving conflicts is to avoid them.Collection: Way
Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.Collection: Goal
It has not been unknown that judges persist in error to avoid giving the appearance of weakness and vacillation.Collection: Errors
The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.Collection: Political
The indispensible judicial requisite is intellectual humility.Collection: Humility
The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.Collection: Libertarian Party
Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization... The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge.Collection: Freedom
Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalised medium of reason, that's all we have between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feelings.Collection: Law
Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world.Collection: Men
Of compelling consideration is the fact that words acquire scope and function from the history of events which they summarize.Collection: Events
There is no inevitability in history except as men make it.Collection: Men
Future lawyers should be more aware that law is not a system of abstract logic, but the web of arrangements, rooted in history but also in hopes, for promoting to a maximum the full use of a nation's resources and talents.Collection: Law
In law also the emphasis makes the song.Collection: Song
What becomes decisive to a Justice's functioning on the Court in the large area within which his individuality moves is his general attitude toward law, the habits of the mind that he has formed or is capable of unforming, his capacity for detachment, his temperament or training for putting his passion behind his judgment instead of in front of it. The attitudes and qualities which I am groping to characterize are ingredients of what compendiously might be called dominating humility.Collection: Attitude
While it is not always profitable to analogize "fact" to "fiction," La Fontaine's fable of the crow, the cheese, and the fox demonstrates that there is a substantial difference between holding a piece of cheese in the beak and putting it in the stomach.Collection: Differences
Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society.Collection: Freedom