In this Court dissents have gradually become majority opinions (Felix Frankfurter)
The mode by which the inevitable is reached is effort. (Felix Frankfurter)
Decisions of this Court do not have intrinsic authority. (Felix Frankfurter)
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 (Felix Frankfurter)
The real rulers in Washington are invisible to exercise power from behind the scenes. (Felix Frankfurter)
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 (Felix Frankfurter)
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 (Felix Frankfurter)
It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. (Felix Frankfurter)
Selfishness is the dynamo of our economic system...which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self- expression. (Felix Frankfurter)
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 (Felix Frankfurter)
I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough. (Felix Frankfurter)
The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards. (Felix Frankfurter)
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. (Felix Frankfurter)
The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind. (Felix Frankfurter)
More Felix Frankfurter Quotations (Based on Topics)