Felix Frankfurter Quotes

The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.

Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate.

The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.

The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.

Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.

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.

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

Freedom of speech and of the press are essential to the enlightenment of a free people and in restraining those who wield power.

There can be no security where there is fear.

No office in the land is more important than that of being a citizen.

If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, "good fences make good neighbors."

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society.

Judicial judgment must take deep account...of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.

The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.

Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.

We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.

I know of no title that I deem more honorable than that of Professor of the Harvard Law School.

The line must follow some direction of policy, whether rooted in logic or experience. Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines.

The most constructive way of resolving conflicts is to avoid them.

I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.

It simply is not true that war never settles anything.

To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.

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.

Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.

Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world.

Anybody who is any good is different from anybody else.

The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.

There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.

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.

It has not been unknown that judges persist in error to avoid giving the appearance of weakness and vacillation.

No judge writes on a wholly clean slate.

The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.

Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.

To be effective, judicial administration must not be leaden-footed.

Ambiguity lurks in generality, and may thus become an instrument of severity.

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.

Is that which was deemed to be of so fundamental a nature as to be written into the Constitution to endure for all times to be the sport of shifting winds of doctrine?

After all, advocates, including advocates for States, are like managers of pugilistic and election contestants in that they have a propensity for claiming everything.

There is no inevitability in history except as men make it.

Of compelling consideration is the fact that words acquire scope and function from the history of events which they summarize.

In law also the emphasis makes the song.

Anybody can decide a question if only a single principle is in controversy.

It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of "laws" to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it.

The eternal struggle in the law between constancy and change is largely a struggle between history and reason, between past reason and present needs.

One is entitled to say without qualification that the correlation between prior judicial experience and fitness for the Supreme Court is zero.

No court can make time stand still.