Felix Frankfurter Quotes - Page 2

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• Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization... The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Freedom, Spring, Men

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• Government is itself an art, one of the subtlest of the arts. It is neither business, nor technology, nor applied science. It is the art of making men live together in peace and with reasonable happiness.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Art, Technology, Men

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• Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalised medium of reason, that's all we have between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feelings.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Law, Feelings, Reason

  "Felix Frankfurter Reminisces". Book by Harlan Buddington Phillips, January 1, 1960.

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• Congress is, after all, not a body of laymen unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our law. This legislation was the formulation of the two Judiciary Committees, all of whom are lawyers, and the Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Law, Two, Body

  "Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. January 9, 1961.

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• For the highest exercise of judicial duty is to subordinate one's personal pulls and one's private views to the law of which we are all guaradians - those impersonal convictions that made a society a civilized community, and not the victims of personal rule.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Exercise, Views, Law

  "Mr. Justice Frankfurter: 'A Heritage for All Who Love the Law'". Tom C. Clark, "American Bar Association Journal", Volume 51, No. 4, April 1965.

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• It simply is not true that war never settles anything.

  Felix Frankfurter

  War, Never Settle, Settling

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• The line must follow some direction of policy, whether rooted in logic or experience. Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Drawing, Lines, Sake

  "Pearce v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 315 U.S. 543". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. March 9, 1942.

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

  Felix Frankfurter

  Character, Men, Aquariums

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• We recognize that stare decisis embodies an important social policy that represents an element of continuity in law and is rooted in the psychological need to satisfy reasonable expectations.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Expectations, Important, Psychological

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• It has not been unknown that judges persist in error to avoid giving the appearance of weakness and vacillation.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Errors, Giving, Judging

  "Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. May 19, 1947.

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• Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Truth, Hero, Expression

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• While it is not always profitable to analogize "fact" to "fiction," La Fontaine's fable of the crow, the cheese, and the fox demonstrates that there is a substantial difference between holding a piece of cheese in the beak and putting it in the stomach.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Differences, Crow, Fiction

  "Alleghany Corp. v. Breswick & Co., 353 U.S. 151". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 22, 1957.

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• A license cannot 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. If a State licensing agency lays bare its arbitrary action, or if the State law explicitly allows it to act arbitrarily, that is precisely the kind of State action which the Due Process Clause forbids.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Agency, Law

  "Barsky v. Board of Regents of the University, 347 U.S. 442". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 26, 1954.

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• The eternal struggle in the law between constancy and change is largely a struggle between history and reason, between past reason and present needs.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Struggle, Past, Law

  "Twenty Years of Mr. Justice Holmes' Constitutional Opinions". Felix Frankfurter, "The Harvard Law Review", Volume 36, 1923.

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• 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.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Thinking, Noble, Heritage

  "The Atlantic" Magazine, March 1964.

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

  Felix Frankfurter

  Freedom, Mean, Liberty

  The New York Times, November 28, 1954.

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• No court can make time stand still.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Making Time, Court, Stills

  "Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 316 U.S. 4". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 6, 1942.

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• Ours is an accusatorial, 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

  Guilt, Mouths, Coercion

  "Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. March 20, 1961.

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• There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Judging, Ignorant

  "Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 27, 1949.

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

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Enough, Efficiency

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• Morals are three-quarters manners.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Three, Moral, Manners

  "Felix Frankfurter Reminisces". Book by Harlan Buddington Phillips, January 1, 1960.

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• No judge writes on a wholly clean slate.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Writing, Judging, Clean

  "The Commerce Clause under Marshall, Taney, and Waite". Book by Felix Frankfurter, 1937.

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• To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Law, Feet, Facts

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• Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law. Government may not interfere with organized or individual expressions of belief or disbelief. Propagation of belief - or even of disbelief - in the supernatural is protected, whether in church or chapel, mosque or synagogue, tabernacle or meeting-house.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Expression, Law

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• 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.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Reading, Justice, Decision

  "Parliamentary Affairs". "The Supreme Court", Volume 3, No. 1, Winter 1949.

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