Benjamin N. Cardozo Quotes

60 Sourced Quotes

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
A judge is to give effect in general not to his own scale of values, but to the scale of values revealed to him in his readings of the social mind. … Objective tests may fail him, or may be confused as to bewilder. He must then look within himself.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
As I search the archives of my memory I seem to discern six types or methods which divide themselves from one another with measurable distinctness. There is the type magisterial or imperative; the type laconic or sententious; the type conversational or homely; the type refined or artificial, smelling of the lamp, verging at times upon preciosity or euphuism; the demonstrative or persuasive; and finally the type tonsorial or agglutinative, so called from the shears and the pastepot which are its implements and emblem.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
I am ready to concede that the rule of adherence to precedent, though it ought not to be abandoned, ought to be in some degree relaxed. I think that when a rule, after it has been duly tested by experience, has been found to be inconsistent with the sense of justice or with the social welfare, there should be less hesitation in frank avowal and full abandonment. … That court best serves the law which recognizes that the rules of law which grew up in a remote generation may, in the fullness of experience, be found to serve another generation badly, and which discards the old rule when it finds that another rule of law represents what should be according to the established and settled judgment of society.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
The repetition of a catchword can hold analysis in fetters for fifty years or more.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
If you ask how he is to know when one interest outweighs another, I can only answer that he must get his knowledge just as the legislator gets it, from experience and study and reflection; in brief, from life itself.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.

Benjamin N. Cardozo