Louis D. Brandeis
22 quotes
Biography
Louis Dembitz Brandeis was an American lawyer who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939.
"If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you."
"Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."
"Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."
"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent."
"Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."
"Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law it invites every man to become a law unto himself it invites anarchy."
"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent."
"To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution."
"Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."
"America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered."
"Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."
"Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done."
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
"There are no shortcuts in evolution."
"Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understan"
"The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions -- knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas -- become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use."~Louis D. Brandeis"
"Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the other, the conviction that such equal opportunity will most advance civilization."
"Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent."
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced sil"
"The most important office is that of private citizen."
"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few but we can't have both."