Felix Frankfurter Quotes

[It is anomalous] to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.

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

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

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

There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.

Ambiguity lurks in generality and may thus become an instrument of severity.

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

A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not on another occasion indulge its own will.

The indispensable judicial requisite is intellectual humility.

After all, this is the Nation's ultimate judicial tribunal, nor a super-legal-aid bureau.

If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, "good fences make good neighbors."

If one starts with the assumption that, in the absence of specific Congressional authority, a fixed rule of law precludes contracting officers from providing in a Government contract terms reasonably calculated to assure its performance even though there be no money loss through a particular default, there is no problem. But answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.

Decisions of this Court do not have equal intrinsic authority.

It has not been unknown that judges persist in error to avoid giving the appearance of weakness and vacillation.

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