Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Felix Frankfurter (Austrian-Born Jurist)

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) was an Austrian-American judge, law professor, and legal advisor, best known for his role as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He served as Secretary of War 1911–13 under President William H. Taft, advised President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and counseled President Franklin D. Roosevelt on New Deal legislation 1933–39.

Born in Vienna, Austria, Frankfurter immigrated to the United States at age 12. He earned his law degree from Harvard Law School and became a prominent legal scholar, known for advocating civil liberties. His judicial philosophy emphasized restraint and the importance of judicial independence.

Before joining the Supreme Court, Frankfurter was a professor at Harvard University 1914–39, where he wrote extensively on constitutional law and influenced both scholars and practitioners. His influential book The Business of the Supreme Court (1928) examined the Court’s decision-making process and its role in shaping American law.

Appointed by President Roosevelt in 1939, Frankfurter served on the Supreme Court until 1962. He was known for his careful, deliberative approach and focus on precedent and the separation of powers. His rulings in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) and Betts v. Brady (1942) reflected his beliefs in limited government power and individual rights.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Felix Frankfurter

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.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Work

We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Freedom

Government is itself an art, one of the subtlest of the arts. It is neither business, nor technology, nor applied science. It is the art of making men live together in peace and with reasonable happiness.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Government

I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Perfection

To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Facts, Lawyers

Lincoln’s appeal to ‘the better angels of our nature’ failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln’s first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Compassion

There can be no security where there is fear.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Security

Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Gratitude

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.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Judaism

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Wisdom

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.
—Felix Frankfurter

We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Professionalism

Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Justice

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Character, Old Age

The words of the Constitution are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.
—Felix Frankfurter

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

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