Quotes from Louis D. Brandeis

A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state and of his city; for being loyal to his family and to his profession or trade; for being loyal to his college or his lodge.

However great his outward conformity, the immigrant is not Americanized unless his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here. And we properly demand of the immigrant even more than this. He must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment.

Men feared witches and burned women.

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 per day, but that is not a good way to live.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

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 sil

I rise early because no day is long enough for a day's work.

Organisation can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgement.

The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions and ideas become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use.

Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.

Organization can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgment.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

Privacy is the right to be alone–the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized man.

The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities.

Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence.

There are no shortcuts in evolution.

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.

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.

Men long for an afterlife in which there apparently is nothing to do but delight in heaven's wonders.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by mean of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.

Denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the Nation. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.

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

Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.