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

Felix Frankfurter

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Felix Frankfurter
Age: 82 †
Born: 1882
Born: November 15
Died: 1965
Died: February 22
Former Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Politician
Vienna
Austria
Nice
Controversies
Politics
Summary
History
Forged
Political
Involving
People
Controversy
Fairs
Fair
Liberty
Safeguards

More quotes by Felix Frankfurter

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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.
Felix Frankfurter
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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.
Felix Frankfurter
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Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.
Felix Frankfurter
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No office in the land is more important than that of being a citizen.
Felix Frankfurter
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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.
Felix Frankfurter
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Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society.
Felix Frankfurter
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The eternal struggle in the law between constancy and change is largely a struggle between history and reason, between past reason and present needs.
Felix Frankfurter
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If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, good fences make good neighbors.
Felix Frankfurter
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Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes.
Felix Frankfurter
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The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.
Felix Frankfurter
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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?
Felix Frankfurter
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Morals are three-quarters manners.
Felix Frankfurter
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Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep. I can express with very limited adequacy the passionate devotion to this land that possesses millions of our people, born, like myself, under other skies, for the privilege that that this county has bestowed in allowing them to partake of its fellowship.
Felix Frankfurter
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Ours is an accusatorial, and not an inquisitorial, system - a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured, and may not, by coercion, prove its charge against an accused out of his own mouth.
Felix Frankfurter
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Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.
Felix Frankfurter
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No court can make time stand still.
Felix Frankfurter
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Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.
Felix Frankfurter
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We recognize that stare decisis embodies an important social policy that represents an element of continuity in law and is rooted in the psychological need to satisfy reasonable expectations.
Felix Frankfurter
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Government is itself an art, one of the subtlest of the arts. It is neither business, nor technology, nor applied science. It is the art of making men live together in peace and with reasonable happiness.
Felix Frankfurter
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In the first place, lawyers better remember they are human beings, and a human being who hasn't his periods of doubts and distresses and disappointments must be a cabbage, not a human being. That is number one.
Felix Frankfurter