Felix Frankfurter

Future lawyers should be more aware that law is not a system of abstract logic, but the web of arrangements, rooted in…

— Felix Frankfurter

It is important not to give the appearance of a predisposed mind. And it is more important not to let the mind…

— Felix Frankfurter

In the first place, lawyers better remember they are human beings, and a human being who hasn't his periods of doubts and…

— Felix Frankfurter

The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in…

— Felix Frankfurter

A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it…

— Felix Frankfurter

It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of 'laws' to what is found written on the statute…

— Felix Frankfurter

What becomes decisive to a Justice's functioning on the Court in the large area within which his individuality moves is his general…

— Felix Frankfurter

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

— Felix Frankfurter

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

— Felix Frankfurter

The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.

— Felix Frankfurter

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

— Felix Frankfurter

We recognize that stare decisis embodies an important social policy that represents an element of continuity in law and is rooted in…

— Felix Frankfurter

The eternal struggle in the law between constancy and change is largely a struggle between history and reason, between past reason and…

— Felix Frankfurter

It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of…

— Felix Frankfurter

I came into the world a Jew, and although I did not live my life entirely as a Jew, I think it…

— Felix Frankfurter

To be effective, judicial administration must not be leaden-footed.

— Felix Frankfurter

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

— Felix Frankfurter

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

— Felix Frankfurter

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

— Felix Frankfurter

Anybody who is any good is different from anybody else.

— Felix Frankfurter

There can be no security where there is fear.

— Felix Frankfurter

It would be a stultification of the responsibility which the course of constitutional history has cast upon this Court to hold that…

— Felix Frankfurter

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

— Felix Frankfurter

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

— Felix Frankfurter

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

— Felix Frankfurter