FELIX FRANKFURTER

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

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

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

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.

To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.

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

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

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.

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

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

There can be no security where there is fear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I came into the world a Jew, and although I did not live my life entirely as a Jew, I think it is fitting that I should leave as a Jew. I don't want to turn my back on a great and noble heritage.

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

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

The Constitution was made for an undefined and expanding future ... ... is not a fixed formula defined with finality at a particular time. It does not reflect, as a congealed summary, the social arrangements and beliefs of a particular epoch ... The effect of changes in men’s feelings for what is right and just is equally relevant in determining whether a discrimination denies the equal protection of the laws.

This is the first indication I have ever had that there is a God.

If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny.

Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.

… an anachronistic survival of monarchial privilege.