Quote

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.

Felix Frankfurter

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Law
Undisciplined
Feelings
Fragile
Reason
Medium
Mediums
Cruelty
Limited
Tyranny
Mere
Unbridled

More quotes by Felix Frankfurter

Image
Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
Morals are three-quarters manners.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
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
Image
To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
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
Image
The words of the Constitution... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, good fences make good neighbors.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
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
Image
The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution... But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
It has not been unknown that judges persist in error to avoid giving the appearance of weakness and vacillation.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
Judicial judgment must take deep account...of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.
Felix Frankfurter