Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) was a jurist, who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Frankfurter was born in Vienna and immigrated to New York at the age of 12. He graduated from Harvard Law School and was active politically, helping to found the American Civil Liberties Union. He was a friend and adviser of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1939. Frankfurter served on the Supreme Court for 23 years, and was a noted advocate of judicial restraint in the judgments of the Court.
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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
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
It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
—Felix Frankfurter
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
Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Old Age, Character
I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Perfection
Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Gratitude
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
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
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
Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Justice
We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Professionalism
Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Wisdom
To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Facts, Lawyers
There can be no security where there is fear.
—Felix Frankfurter
Topics: Security
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
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