Felix Frankfurter Quotes
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Anybody can decide a question if only a single principle is in controversy.
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I know of no title that I deem more honorable than that of Professor of the Harvard Law School.
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The line must follow some direction of policy, whether rooted in logic or experience. Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines.
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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.
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Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.
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Decisions of this Court do not have intrinsic authority.
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Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
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The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.
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To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
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It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
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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.
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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.
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It simply is not true that war never settles anything.
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The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.
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Holmes said Emerson had a beautiful voice, and, of course, Holmes had one of the most beautiful voices the Lord ever put into a throat.
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In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives.
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Of compelling consideration is the fact that words acquire scope and function from the history of events which they summarize.
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A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not on another occasion indulge its own will.
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The eternal struggle in the law between constancy and change is largely a struggle between history and reason, between past reason and present needs.
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Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.
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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.
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After all, this is the Nation's ultimate judicial tribunal, nor a super-legal-aid bureau.
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We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.
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It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.