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 Copy Share Image
Future lawyers should be more aware that law is not a system of abstract logic, but the web of arrangements, rooted in history but… — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
It is important not to give the appearance of a predisposed mind. And it is more important not to let the mind become predisposed. — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
In the first place, lawyers better remember they are human beings, and a human being who hasn't his periods of doubts and distresses and… — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan… — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share
A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not,… — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of 'laws' to what is found written on the statute books, and… — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
What becomes decisive to a Justice's functioning on the Court in the large area within which his individuality moves is his general attitude toward law, the habits of the mind that he has formed or is capable of unforming, his capacity for detachment, his temperament or training for putting his passion behind his judgment instead of in front of it.… — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share
We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician. — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
Anybody can decide a question if only a single principle is in controversy. — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals. — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind. — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
We recognize that stare decisis embodies an important social policy that represents an element of continuity in law and is rooted in the psychological… — Felix Frankfurter Copy Share Image
