Quotes by Felix Frankfurter

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“To some lawyers, all facts are created equal”

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

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.

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

The Courts authority - possessed of neither the purse nor the sword -ultimately rests on substantial public confidence in its moral sanctions.

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

To some lawyers all facts are created equal.

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

I dont like a man to be too efficient. Hes likely to be not human enough.

It simply is not true that war never settles anything.

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

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