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We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.

Benjamin Cardozo

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Benjamin Cardozo
Mind
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More quotes by Benjamin Cardozo

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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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Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
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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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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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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.
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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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Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
Benjamin Cardozo
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Law never is, but is always about to be.
Benjamin Cardozo
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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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Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
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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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The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
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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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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
Benjamin Cardozo
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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.
Benjamin Cardozo
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Expediency may tip the scales when arguments are nicely balanced.
Benjamin Cardozo
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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.
Benjamin Cardozo
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The repetition of a catchword can hold analysis in fetters for fifty years or more.
Benjamin Cardozo
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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
Benjamin Cardozo
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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
Benjamin Cardozo