Quotes from Felix Frankfurter

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.

Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.

Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

The words of the Constitution are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.

There can be no security where there is fear.

To some lawyers all facts are created equal.

We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.

Wisdom too often never comes, so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.

Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalised medium of reason, that's all we have between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feelings.

We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.

The most constructive way of resolving conflicts is to avoid them.

Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes.

Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

I came into the world a Jew, and although I did not live my life entirely as a Jew, I think it is fitting that I should leave as a Jew. I don't want to ... turn my back on a great and noble heritage.

It simply is not true that war never settles anything.

The Court's authority - possessed of neither the purse nor the sword -ultimately rests on substantial public confidence in its moral sanctions.

Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling.

To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in cases involving not very nice people.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough.