Felix Frankfurter Quotes (36 Quotes)

In this Court dissents have gradually become majority opinions

The mode by which the inevitable is reached is effort.

Decisions of this Court do not have intrinsic authority.

A license cannot be be revoked because a man is red-headed or because he was divorced, except for a calling, if such there be, for which red-headedness or an unbroken marriage may have some rational bearing

The real rulers in Washington are invisible to exercise power from behind the scenes.

Ours is an accusational and not an inquisitorial system - a system in which the state must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charge against an accused out of his own mouth

If the function of this Court is to be essentially no different from that of a legislature, if the considerations governing constitutional construction are to be substantially those that underlie legislation, then indeed judges should not have life

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.

Selfishness is the dynamo of our economic system...which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self- expression.

Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling

I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough.

The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.

There can be no security where there is fear.

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.

The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.

We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.

It must take account of what it decrees for today in order that today may not paralyze tomorrow.

It (government) is neither business nor technology nor applied science (It is) one of the subtlest of the arts since it is the art of making men live together in peace and with reasonable happiness.

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

It simply is not true that war never settles anything.

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.

Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

The words of the Constitution are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.

To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.

Ultimately there can be no freedom for self unless it is vouchsafed for others there can be no security where there is fear, and a democratic society presupposes confidence and candor in the relations of men with one another and eager collaboration for the larger ends of life instead of the pursuit of petty, selfish or vainglorious aims.

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.

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.

Anybody can decide a question if only a single principle is in controversy.

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.

Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.

Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.

The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.