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Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Louis D. Brandeis

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Louis D. Brandeis
Age: 84 †
Born: 1856
Born: November 13
Died: 1941
Died: October 5
Judge
Lawyer
Louisville
Kentucky
Louis Dembitz Brandeis
Men
Speech
Witch
Serious
Irrational
Alone
Injury
Free
Justify
Witches
Religion
Oppression
Burnt
Fear
Fears
Feared
Cannot
Atheism
Assembly
Women
Function
Bondage

More quotes by Louis D. Brandeis

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If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
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Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants electric light the most efficient policeman.
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The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities.
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The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title of citizen.
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Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties.
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Organisation can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgement.
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Men long for an afterlife in which there apparently is nothing to do but delight in heaven's wonders.
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Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.
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The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
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The most important thing we do is not doing.
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I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.
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If you would venture, let your mind be bold . . . not reckless but bold.
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If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you.
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Sunshine is the greatest disinfectant
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The makers of our Constitution . . . conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
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The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.
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America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.
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We shall have lost something vital and beyond price on the day when the state denies us the right to resort to force.
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Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence.
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In a democracy, the most important office is the office of citizen
Louis D. Brandeis