Quotes from Louis D. Brandeis

There are no shortcuts in evolution.

Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent.

The difference between a nation and a nationality is clear, but it is not always observed. Likeness between members is the essence of nationality, but the members of a nation may be very different. A nation may be composed of many nationalities, as some of the most successful nations are.

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.

Anyone who critically analyzes a business learns this: that the success or failure of an enterprise depends usually upon one man.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.

To be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

Repression breeds hate; hate menaces stable government.

There is no great writing, only great rewriting.

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.

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards.

The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles.

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.

When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.'

To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution.

History is not life, but since only life makes history, the union of the two is obvious.

If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you.

Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the other, the conviction that such equal opportunity will most advance civilization.

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

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.

If you will just start with the idea that this is a hard world, it will all be much simpler.