Benjamin N. Cardozo - Life Quotes

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Three great mysteries there are in the lives of mortal beings: the mystery of birth at the beginning; the mystery of death at the end; and greater than either, the mystery of love. Everything that is most precious in life is a form of love. Art is a form of love, if it be noble; labor is a form of love, if it be worthy; thought is a form of love, if it be inspired.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.

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
There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them; and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
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. Judges cannot escape that current any more than other mortals. All their lives, forces which they do not recognize and cannot name, have been tugging at them — inherited instincts, traditional beliefs, acquired convictions; and the resultant is an outlook on life, a conception of social needs. … In this mental background every problem finds it setting. 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.

Benjamin N. Cardozo
The theorist has a hard time to make his way in an ungrateful world. He is supposed to be indifferent to realities; yet his life is spent in the exposure of realities, which, till illuminated by his searchlight, were hidden and unknown.

Benjamin N. Cardozo