Louis D. Brandeis Quotes

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.

The protection guaranteed by the Amendments is much broader in scope. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And the use, as evidence in a criminal proceeding, of facts ascertained by such intrusion must be deemed a violation of the Fifth.

[Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)]

If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

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.

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.

The most important political office is that of private citizen.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.

In every such case, the individual is entitled to decide that which is his... shall be given to the public.

Every criminal in the public service is a plague spot spreading contagion on every hand.

When once a banker has entered the Board – whatever may have been the occasion – his grip proves tenacious and his influence usually supreme; for he controls the supply of new money.

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.

What I have desired to do is to make the people of Boston realize that the most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen. The duties of the office of private citizen cannot under a republican form of government be neglected without serious injury to the public.

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.