The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

To the somnambulist, sleep-walking may seem more pleasant and less hazardous than wakeful walking, but the latter is the wiser mode of locomotion in the congested traffic of a modern community. It is about time to abandon judicial somnambulism.

Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization.

To vest a few fallible men — prosecutors, judges, jurors — with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J. S. Mill called a moral police, is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products. If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do likewise to a work of genius.

Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. We must put question marks along many of our inherited legal dogmas, since they are dangerously out of line with social facts.

Only a very foolish lawyer will dare guess the outcome of a jury trial.

The inexpressible is the only thing that is worthwhile.