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There is no inevitability in history except as men make it.

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
History
Make
Men
Inevitability
Except

More quotes by 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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In law also the emphasis makes the song.
Felix Frankfurter
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No judge writes on a wholly clean slate.
Felix Frankfurter
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The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.
Felix Frankfurter
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The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.
Felix Frankfurter
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I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.
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
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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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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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The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.
Felix Frankfurter
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The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.
Felix Frankfurter
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Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.
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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To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
Felix Frankfurter
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No court can make time stand still.
Felix Frankfurter
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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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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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While it is not always profitable to analogize fact to fiction, La Fontaine's fable of the crow, the cheese, and the fox demonstrates that there is a substantial difference between holding a piece of cheese in the beak and putting it in the stomach.
Felix Frankfurter
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The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.
Felix Frankfurter
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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