Quotes from Felix Frankfurter

If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.

Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world.

There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.

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

It is anomalous to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.

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

The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.

There can be no security where there is fear.

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.

One is entitled to say without qualification that the correlation between prior judicial experience and fitness for the Supreme Court is zero.

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.

Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.