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

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
Giving
Persist
Error
Unknown
Appearance
Errors
Avoid
Weakness
Vacillation
Judging
Judges

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One is entitled to say without qualification that the correlation between prior judicial experience and fitness for the Supreme Court is zero.
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Anybody who is any good is different from anybody else.
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I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.
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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.
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The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.
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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.
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If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, good fences make good neighbors.
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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.
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The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.
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No office in the land is more important than that of being a citizen.
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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.
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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.
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The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.
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Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.
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Morals are three-quarters manners.
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In law also the emphasis makes the song.
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Future lawyers should be more aware that law is not a system of abstract logic, but the web of arrangements, rooted in history but also in hopes, for promoting to a maximum the full use of a nation's resources and talents.
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It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
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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.
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Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.
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