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The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.

Benjamin Cardozo

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Benjamin Cardozo
Law
Spontaneous
Wrong
Runs
Natural
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Running
Throughout
Right
Evolution
Constant
Limits
Habit
Evolutions

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The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
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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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Danger invites rescue. ... The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
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Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
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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.
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The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
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Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
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We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.
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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.
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Justice 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.
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