Benjamin Cardozo

“The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.”

“The work of a judge is in one sense enduring and in another sense ephemeral.”

“Danger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief.”

“We may try to see things as objectively as we please. None the less, we can never see them with any eyes except our own.”

“The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments.”

“There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action.”

“Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.”

“Metaphors in law are to be narrowly watched, for starting as devices to liberate thought, they end often by enslaving it.”

“Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.”

“The inn that shelters for the night is not the journey's end. The law, like the traveler, must be ready for the morrow. It must have a principle of growth.”

“The final cause of law is the welfare of society.”

“The content of the law is also changing. The law is not a static concept, but a dynamic one.”

“The risk to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed.”

“The Constitution was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.”