Felix Frankfurter Quotes
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Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.
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In the first place, lawyers better remember they are human beings, and a human being who hasn't his periods of doubts and distresses and disappointments must be a cabbage, not a human being. That is number one.
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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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The most constructive way of resolving conflicts is to avoid them.
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To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
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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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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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Of compelling consideration is the fact that words acquire scope and function from the history of events which they summarize.
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After all, this is the Nation's ultimate judicial tribunal, nor a super-legal-aid bureau.
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It simply is not true that war never settles anything.
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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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Congress is, after all, not a body of laymen unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our law. This legislation was the formulation of the two Judiciary Committees, all of whom are lawyers, and the Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.
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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 ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.
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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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The Amendment nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination.
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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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It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.
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We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.
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The course of decision in this Court has thus far jealously enforced the principle of a free society secured by the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. Its safeguards are not to be worn away by a process of devitalizing interpretation.
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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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Decisions of this Court do not have intrinsic authority.