Felix Frankfurter's Quotes

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

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.

All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.

Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.

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

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

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

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.

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

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

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

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

It simply is not true that war never settles anything.

Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.

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

The mode by which the inevitable is reached is effort.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

There can be no security where there is fear.

To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.

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

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

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.