52 Quotes by Benjamin N. Cardozo

The outstanding truths of life, the great and unquestioned phenomena of society, are not to be argued away as myths and vagaries when they do not fit within our little moulds. If necessary, we must remake the moulds.

The work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Justice, though due to the accused, is due the accuser also. The concept of fairness cannot be strained till it is narrowed to a filament. We are to keep our balance true.

The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

Law never is, but is always about to be.

The final cause of law is the welfare of society.

The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.

Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.