Louis D. Brandeis Quotes
-
Crime is contagious....if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.
→ -
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.
→ -
At the foundation of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.
→ -
... fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.
→ -
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties.
→ -
The goose that lays golden eggs has been considered a most valuable possession. But even more profitable is the privilege of taking the golden eggs laid by somebody else's goose. The investment bankers and their associates now enjoy that privilege.
→ -
The makers of our Constitution . . . conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
→ -
The constitutional right of free speech has been declared to be the same in peace and war. In peace, too, men may differ widely as to what loyalty to our country demands, and an intolerant majority, swayed by passion or by fear, may be prone in the future, as it has been in the past, to stamp as disloyal opinions with which it disagrees.
→ -
We gain nothing by trading the tyranny of capital for the tyranny of labor.
→ -
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means - to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal - would bring terrible retributions.
→ -
The old idea of a good bargain was a transaction in which one man got the better of another. The new idea of a good contract is a transaction which is good for both parties to it.
→ -
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.
→ -
Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence.
→ -
It is one of the greatest economic errors to put any limitation upon production.We have not the power to produce more than there is a potential to consume.
→ -
The progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire tapping. Ways may some day be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions. 'That places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer' was said by James Otis of much lesser intrusions than these.
→ -
Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.
→ -
In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.
→ -
It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
→ -
I think all of our human Experience shows that no one with absolute power can be trusted to give it up even in part
→ -
It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.
→ -
The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.
→ -
Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.
→ -
The right most valued by all civilized men is the right to be left alone.
→ -
Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.
→ -
In differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress.
→ -
Men feared witches and burned women.
→ -
Anyone who critically analyzes a business learns this: that the success or failure of an enterprise depends usually upon one man.
→ -
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 silence.
→ -
Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.
→ -
The greatest factors making for communism, socialism or anarchy among a free people are the excesses of capital. The talk of the agitator does not advance socialism one step. The great captains of industry and finance... are the chief makers of socialism.
→
Louis D. Brandeis
- Born: November 13, 1856
- Died: October 5, 1941
- Occupation: Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Related Authors
-
Benjamin Cardozo Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
William Howard Taft 27th U.S. President -
Felix Frankfurter Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
William J. Brennan Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
-
Eugene V. Debs Political leader -
Theodore Roosevelt 26th U.S. President -
Robert M. La Follette, Sr. Former member of the U.S. Senate -
-
William O. Douglas Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Woodrow Wilson 28th U.S. President -
Learned Hand Judge -
Abram L. Sachar Historian -
John Paul Stevens Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Earl Warren Former Chief Justice of the United States -
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
George Sutherland Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Charles Evans Hughes Former Governor of New York -
Hugo Black Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States